BEFORE: This is the fourth action film in a row "based on a true story", and I'm getting a little burned out on the genre, as you might imagine. Lots of gunplay, high body counts this week, and it's been affecting my sleep patterns. It's harder for me to go to bed after a war film sort of jacks up my adrenaline. I can't wait to get back to some light comedy or even an animated film so I can calm down and get some rest.
William Fichtner carries over from "12 Strong", and so does one other actor and one terrorist.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Zero Dark Thirty" (Movie #1,582)
THE PLOT: A group of Navy SEALs come to learn the identity of their next target: Osama Bin Laden.
AFTER: I should have known something was wrong when I saw this listed as a "TV Movie" - usually, famously, that's not a good sign. This film was made for the National Geographic Channel, and then for some reason later aired on the premium channels with the commercials removed. The version I saw was only 90 minutes long, so that was probably 2 hours of NatGeo air-time with ads. But since the original version probably did have ads, there are still constant reminders of what happened before the break, even when the breaks are no longer there.
What's worse is that there's no information in this story that couldn't have come from news reports and news footage, in other words, nobody wrote a book about these real-world events and then adapted the book into a film, like with "12 Strong", instead they probably just went straight from news reports to a fictionalized versions, with a couple of Obama speeches before and after the event to fill in some gaps.
And since the mission was classified and the names of the SEAL team members were not revealed, at least not before this film was made, the soldiers couldn't possibly be based on real people, they're just sort of amalgams of what we imagine soldiers to be. Even in the personal moments when they're Skyping loved ones, all we really learn about "Trench" and "Mule" is that they have families, that they're training real hard, and some of them love to play first-person shooter video-games. (I personally think that after a hard day of training with guns, the LAST thing a soldier would want to do would be to play a first-person shooter game. They probably would want the complete opposite of their daily routine in order to relax, and prefer to play Mario Kart or something.).
But any sixth-grader who watched the news could have written this screenplay. Like, at one point we learn that "Cherry" has some kind of a beef with "Stunner", but do we ever really find out what it was? Was he challenging him for leadership of the squad, were they fighting over a woman, what was the deal?
NITPICK POINT: And don't get me started on "D-Punch". We can't say "donkey punch" on cable TV any more, what kind of censorship is that? Come on, you know that's what the "D" stands for - but if you can't say the nickname, and that wasn't a Seal Team member's name anyway, then why not give him another phony name?
And what's worse than THAT is that the framing device used to tell the story is a series of interview sessions with the key players, like Cherry and "CIA Analyst #1". Who is interviewing them? Why are they talking to anyone about this classified mission, which is, you know, classified to the nth degree. The soldiers even point out to each other that, assuming Bin Laden was their target, they would never ever be able to talk about it, not even if they were the one that took the kill shot.
The "facts" in this film were never confirmed or denied by the White House - so we don't really know how this went down, but no, by all means, don't let that stop you from making a movie about it. According to this film, a couple of CIA operatives followed a known Taliban courier to that compond in Abbottabad, Pakistan and suspected that Bin Laden was there based on all of the children that were being home-schooled there, and the fact that they burned all of their trash. So they rented an apartment on the other side of a soccer field so they could do surveillance - now I've got to go and look up to see if any of this really happened. To confirm their suspicions about the chief resident of the compound, they (again, allegedly) got a doctor from the local hospital to knock on the door and offer free immunizations to gain access. I guess this was their plan after selling magazine subscription didn't work, and their back-up plan was to leave a flaming bag of poop on Bin Laden's doorstep?
Also starring Cam Gigandet (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Anson Mount (last seen in "Mr. Right"), Freddy Rodriguez (last seen in "Bobby"), Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner (last seen in "XXX: State of the Union"), Robert Knepper (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2"), Kenneth Miller (also carrying over from "12 Strong"), Tait Fletcher (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Kathleen Robertson (last seen in "I Am Sam"), Eddie Kaye Thomas, Kristen Rakes, Rajesh Shringarpure, Jenny Gabrielle, Mo Gallini, David House, Yon Kempton, Jahan Khalili, Keith Meriweather, Lora Martinez-Cunningham, Sarah Minnich, Alma Sisneros, Saleem Watley, Harsh Chhaya, Maninder Singh, with archive footage of Barack Obama (last seen in "Rush: Time Stand Still"), Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump (last seen in "The Polka King"), Seth Meyers (last seen in "Knock Knock, It's Tig Notaro"), Dennis Miller (last seen in "What Happens in Vegas"), and Osama Bin Laden (also carrying over from "12 Strong").
RATING: 3 out of 10 night-vision goggles
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