[Review] 12 Strong (6/10)

Initially the full title was 12 Strong: The Declassified True Story Of The Horse Soldiers, though 12 Strong would have had sufficed, as it is now.

But the movie itself felt very cliched as director Nicolai Fuglsig shot the opening family beats like it was 1999. And you could not get a sense of who this director was from this movie too because there was little to no originality.

If the dialogue was not boring, it did not make sense. That whole point about being a warrior instead of a soldier came without prior context or example from Chris Hemsworth's character. And then later on, there was no fulfillment of that conversation either. But that whole exchange was made out to be a very important one.

Thankfully not a lot of exposition was needed and the second half of the movie, where the action came in, made the entertainment experience a lot stronger. It was never chaotic on the battlefield, you knew which side you were cheering for as Fuglsig shot the action sequences competently.

But the characters, other than Hemsworth and Michael Shannon, barely had much plot points to them other than just being one of the bodies.

There were no memorable performances. Hemsworth, too, started off looking and sounding very much like Thor as he was already sporting this particular hairdo in Ragnarok. So it took a while to get into this character.

However, as a piece of history lesson, yes, it was definitely great to know about the heroic deeds of these 12 soldiers.