Kandahar review: It's not a great film but at least it doesn't caricature its subjects

Director Ric Roman Waugh offers a thrilling action movie that avoids the usual tropes and misrepresentation, despite its Hollywood predictability

Much of Kandahar was shot in the ancient city of AlUla in Saudi Arabia. Photo: Film AlUla

I walked into Kandahar with several preconceived notions about the film.

The premise alone seemed ripe for another problematic Hollywood depiction of war. A CIA operative named Tom Harris (Gerard Butler) is stuck in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.

Several armed groups, including the Taliban, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence as well as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are pursuing him for his role in destroying an Iranian nuclear facility.

With his translator, Muhammad (Navid Negahban), Harris tries to get to an extraction point in the Afghan city of Kandahar.

Besides the premise, the free-hand cross-cultural casting also raised some suspicions. Negahban, an Iranian-US actor famous for his roles in Aladdin and Tehran, plays an Afghan translator who was returning to his homeland for the first time in years. Ali Fazal, an Indian actor with an extensive Bollywood filmography, takes up the role of an ISI officer.

Of course, the craft of acting shouldn’t be limited to an actor’s own culture and experience. But Hollywood has a poor track record of depicting people from the other side of the globe with any sense of accuracy or empathy. Misgivings were warranted.

With this in mind, I was expecting the film to sustain the glorification of militarism, of which Hollywood has long been guilty. I could see it all even before the title screen appeared: western forces would mow through armed and turbaned caricatures of Afghans. Butler would emerge from danger with an orchestral aplomb. The plight of the local population living under tyrannical Taliban laws would be dehumanised. There would be lustful depictions of violence. The film would ignore geopolitical intricacies. Kandahar, I thought, would be another dramatised, cookie-cutter commercial for the cult of the US military, no different to The Hurt Locker or American Sniper.

If this was all the case, it would also mean that the first big-budget Hollywood film to shoot in Saudi Arabia’s AlUla would use apathetic tropes about the region. The same, regurgitated tropes that have long misrepresented the Arab and Islamic worlds.

I was wrong, partly.

Kandahar, if anything, seems to reckon with the way Hollywood has glorified war and US involvement in foreign affairs.

Perhaps because my expectations were so low, Kandahar surprised me.

It seemed an honest attempt by director Ric Roman Waugh and scriptwriter Mitchell LaFortune to give a layered portrayal to the film’s multicultural characters. They also go to some lengths to show how none of the operatives involved in the deadly cat-and-mouse chase really want to be in the game of espionage. The characters are not caricatures, but instead are riddled with contradictions. Islam was not merely depicted as a warmongering creed and the film tries to portray the spiritual and peaceful aspects of the religion as well as making note of how it is misrepresented by extremists.

That said, the first half of the film adheres to Hollywood's tropes. There are scenes of Iranian soldiers beating a civilian for painting a US symbol. Travis Fimmel plays a CIA operative in Dubai who seems, at first, to have converted to Islam for cover. Red-flag phrases, such as “American dream” and “the free world”, are uttered.

But then, as more characters appear and the plot unfolds, the film confronts Hollywood’s misguided portrayals of war.

The face of this confrontation is Muhammad. Negahban offers a layered performance as the Afghan translator, who travels from Baltimore to his home country with the help of the CIA to assist Harris in his mission. Muhammad, however, has his own motives for returning, giving the character depth and audience appeal.

Fazal is also captivating in his role as Kahil, a skilled operative who acts as a middle man between the ISI and the Taliban. The character, although embedded in an environment of religious fundamentalism, seems keener on living decadently. Yet, there is a self-awareness that Fazal brings to the role that elevates the character.

Even the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officer, Farzad, is depicted thoughtfully. While the character is mercilessly dedicated to his job, Iranian-Swedish actor Bahador Foladi offers a subtle, guilt-racked portrayal.

As for Butler, he slips effortlessly into his role as Harris, the MI6 officer on loan to the CIA. The actor had previously worked with Waugh on Angel Has Fallen and Greenland. While he doesn’t bring anything that we haven’t seen before, for fans of the Scottish actor’s oeuvre, Kandahar is an easy recommendation.

Another star in the film is AlUla. The otherworldly landscapes of the Saudi desert serve as brilliant backdrops to high-octane car chases and helicopter battles. Sure, it’s not really the desert in Afghanistan, but the wide-shot scenes of the area are bewitching enough to suspend disbelief.

All that is not to say Kandahar is a great movie. The trajectory it follows is expected, and even though the considerations the film takes for its characters are a pleasant relief, there is little in the plot that surprises. Furthermore, while the film has several battle scenes crafted to exhilarate, it also shows how swiftly and unpoetically death comes in war. It alludes to how Afghans have suffered in the wake of the Taliban takeover, how families were torn apart and how many went missing. It shows the destructive breadth of US involvement in foreign affairs. It shows how, in geopolitical affairs, only immediate interests matter.

Some have described Kandahar as a watered-down version Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, which similarly was released this month and tells the story of an Afghan interpreter and a US sergeant trying to get to safety. The comparison may be deserved. I haven’t seen The Covenant, but if you’re looking for a thrilling popcorn action film that doesn’t make a mess of its subjects, you could do a lot worse than Kandahar.