BEFORE: Well, I added in all of the films that are now available to me via Academy screener, onto my auxiliary list, that is, not my main watchlist, which is holding steady at 155 films. But the secondary list, which is films that are being considered for the main list, those available on screeners, Netflix, and on premium cable which I have not officially recorded on the DVR yet, has now ballooned up to 210 films. I think it was a little over 150 a few weeks ago - that might give you an idea how many screeners get sent out this time of year, it feels like every film that has an outside chance of maybe getting an Oscar nomination is really going for it with the screeners. There are even more films that got released in 2018 that aren't on any of my lists yet, except for the list of films I don't want to forget about when they do become available to me in some form. Umm, I don't count those. But all told that's 365 films I'm considering, plus another 25 that I don't want to forget about. Jesus, that's well over a year's worth of programming, and obviously more films are going to be released in 2019, like "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" and "Toy Story 4" and "Spider-Man: Far From Home", and of course "Star Wars: Episode IX".
So, I've got to be really careful, and start thinking about how I'm going to link to films like "Captain Marvel" in March and "Avengers: Endgame" in May. I'm sort of playing with fire here by watching Josh Brolin in "Only the Brave", and Chris Hemsworth in tonight's film - both are probably on the cast list for this "Avengers" movie, and every time I watch a movie like this, I lessen the chances of the linking being there when I need it. Fortunately I've got all of February to plan out the spring line-up, by then my lists could look very different, with all kinds of new opportunities springing up. I've just got to keep my eyes open and keep all my cast lists current, I hope.
FOUR actors carry over from "Only the Brave", and they are Geoff Stults, Thad Luckinbill, Kenneth Miller and Matthew Van Wettering. Hmm, the two films share a casting director - maybe all this time I've been going about this all wrong, and I should be paying attention to the casting directors, who probably cast the same people again and again. And both films were partially shot in New Mexico in 2016, that's a huge coincidence - though they were filmed 6 months apart.
THE PLOT: The story of the first Special Forces team deployed to Afghanistan after 9/11. Under the leadership of a new captain, the team must work with an Afghan warlord to take down the Taliban.
AFTER: Another high learning curve for me tonight, because this film is set in the month right after the 9/11 attacks, and at the time I was a little busy preparing to get married, on Nov. 3, 2001. This meant we had to walk down in October to City Hall in Manhattan because the subway still wasn't servicing Lower Manhattan, go through extensive security checks because the whole area was basically on lock-down, and stand in a long line outside just to get in the building. We'd been planning it for months, of course, and we weren't about to change our plans necessarily, but for a while there nobody knew when or if life was going to return to normal, and even if it did, whether it would seem appropriate to celebrate anything. And then walking around after, we couldn't really get close to "the pile", but sometimes you'd catch a glimpse of it between buildings or hear the bulldozers and work crews moving rubble around.
And of course we just weren't really thinking about the fact that there might already be people with boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan - though I remember thinking that sending forces over there was probably inevitable, but probably also a really bad idea. Because 3,000 people dying in Manhattan is of course terrible, horrific, but sending more people overseas to die in a war seemed to me like it would only compound the problem. (I think the numbers back me up here - 4,000 soldiers and civilian contractors, 15,000 Afghan security forces and 31,000 civilians - was it worth all that?)
Did I expect America to do nothing in response? I guess not, but I still think it would have been the smart(er) move. The Christian move, even, because the Bible preached that everyone should "turn the other cheek" when they are wronged, but even though the conservative Republicans are usually very Biblical, they seem to forget that when it's time to go to war. I don't mean to sound unpatriotic or un-American, I'm not, just pointing out what I perceive to be a disconnect between the precepts in some people's religion, and what they do in the real world. How do you justify "Love thy neighbor" with "We have to go to war", I haven't got a clue. I guess it's easy to believe in a pacifist religion but very hard to put that into practice.
Anyway, my thoughts on the war that's run on for what, 18 years and counting, are my own - I'm probably in the minority on this point in thinking we never should have gotten involved in a land war in Asia. This film even points out that Afghanistan is the "Graveyard of Empires", so many other countries tried to take them over and failed, most recently the very powerful Soviet Union, who lasted a very long time but eventually gave up - shouldn't that tell you something? The place just isn't worth fighting over, and if you have to fight there, just bomb the hell out of them from the sky and don't put any personnel at risk.
That's sort of what "12 Strong" is about, only they needed somebody to get close enough to the Taliban bases to get exact coordinates, because the bombers were up at 35,000 feet and didn't have the proper intel to make bombing effective. So, enter the Green Berets on a classified mission to get the locations of the Taliban strongholds and relay that information to the B-52s. And yes, they apparently had to ride horses to get from place to place, which seems like antiquated technology, but it really wasn't if they were coordinating via GPS and pinpointing locations with lasers and such.
The trick, of course, was working with THESE Afghanis to take down THOSE Afghanis over there, getting certain warlords to work together in the Northern Alliance to wipe out the Taliban, of course the enemy of your enemy is potentially your friend, but then today's friend could just as easily be tomorrow's enemy. Literally and figuratively, it's a case of constantly shifting sands.
But hey, American soldiers are back on horses, just like the 1800's, so here's what some wannabe cowboys can do, Taliban! YEE-haw! And I'm sure it went down exactly like this, with Green Berets shooting automatic rifles as they rode their horses between the tanks in order to take down that missile launcher. Umm, yeah, right, this is me being sarcastic. Or at least very skeptical. And there's even more hokey stuff here than was seen in "13 Hours", like how the U.S. Army captain learns some Yoda-like lessons from the Afghan warlord, who teaches him to stop thinking like a soldier with his head, and start thinking like a warrior, with his heart. (Excuse me - BARF!) Is that supposed to be serious? This guy's a Green Beret, not the Karate Kid! Give me a break!
Then it's another case of showing a photo of the REAL members of Operational Detachment Alpha 595, which comes as no surprise - just part of an ongoing trend I've noticed to "prove" that everything in a film is true, however I don't think that necessarily proves anything, just that actors can be made to look like real people. This is based on the non-fiction book "Horse Soldiers", but who knows how close the events of the film came to those in the book, or the events in the book to the events in real life. Well, at least the actress playing Chris Hemsworth's character's wife is the actor's wife in real life.
Also starring Chris Hemsworth (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "The Shape of Water"), Michael Peña (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp"), Navid Negahban (last seen in "Brothers"), Trevante Rhodes, William Fichtner (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Rob Riggle (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Elsa Pataky (last seen in "Snakes on a Plane"), Austin Stowell (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Ben O'Toole, Austin Hebert, Kenny Sheard (last seen in "13 Hours"), Jack Kesy (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Taylor Sheridan (last seen in "Hell or High Water"), Numan Acar, Ali Olomi, Fahim Fazli, Laith Nakli, Marie Wagenman, Allison King (last seen in "Midnight Special", Lauren Chavez-Myers, with archive footage of Bill Clinton (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, Madeleine Albright, Donald Rumsfeld, Osama Bin Laden.
RATING: 5 out of 10 MRE's
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