It’s been years since Gerard Butler he almost exclusively embraced his status as an action hero. It is true that his impressive physical display as Leónidas in ‘300’ is far behind him, but at 53 he continues to kick ass non-stop and this Friday his new film finally arrives in Spanish cinemas ‘Operation Kandahar’.
I remember that already on the occasion of the launch of ‘Objective: London’ in 2016 I compared his work with that of kiefer sutherland as Jack Bauer in ’24’. Here the same thing happens again, with the particularity that in this case I remembered more the discreet TV movie ’24: Redemption’ that served as a bridge between the sixth and seventh seasons of the aforementioned action series.
The problem is that it all feels too generic and doesn’t quite stand out on any of the fronts it proposes. To this we must add that in recent weeks we have been able to see two other productions -‘La Unidad: Kabul’ and ‘The pact‘- have dealt with similar issues in more satisfactory ways. Everything adds up against one ‘Operation: Kandahar’ doesn’t bother either, but I know it’s far from exciting.
Flying low
It’s a pity that something like this happens, since ‘Operation Kandahar’ seemed to have everything so that Butler’s character’s escape against time was the basis for a vibrant show full of great action scenes. And it is that it does not matter how hackneyed his starting point is if later the director Ric Roman Waugh managed to bring as much tension as possible to the script of mitchell lafortune. Unfortunately, it is not the case.
Prior to ‘Operation Kandahar’, Waugh had already collaborated with Butler on two occasions with mixed results. In ‘Target: Washington DC’ he offered the least exhilarating adventure of the character of Mike Banning, but instead in ‘Greenland: The Last Refuge’ he was very inspired by his particular vision of the end of the world despite the fact that common places were also the order of the day. Here he seems to want to combine the greater fondness for action with the dramatic sense of the latter, but the mixture never quite comes together.
In favor of ‘Operation Kandahar’ he plays that he has no problems in introduce a certain element of political criticism in the story to try to give it something more importantbut the problem is that at the moment of truth it is nothing more than an excuse to mask another story of a hero between a rock and a hard place who does everything in his power both to save his great ally and to return to meet his daughter.
This last point has become a constant for Butler in recent years, making it impossible not to remember that the same thing happened to Jack Bauer with his daughter Kim. The point is that this equivalent is nothing more than a mere script resource to keep the protagonist motivated and give it a little more prominence so that it is not too perfect a headliner.
The key is how the rest works and there ‘Operation Kandahar’ is much more monotonous than the still recent ‘The pilot’, where the presence of Mike Colter It helped to animate the show a little more. Not to say that the staging work of Jean-François Richet it was much more exhilarating, for here Waugh certainly has several scenes to give it his all, but even then it feels a bit unremarkable. It’s as if the film is content to give just enough to fulfill the file before moving on to the next project.
In fact, there comes a point halfway through the footage in which the viewer is aware that the film seems more focused on buying time creating threats from which we know perfectly well that the two protagonists are going to manage to escape than on creating that emotion necessary for our first thought is that hopefully they manage to get ahead. At least it is not an empty escape in dramatic terms due to Butler’s convincing presence, but beyond that there is very little to scratch.
It is true that the presence of Travis Fimmel (‘Vikings’) seems intended to add a different energy to the film, but her character ends up being a little out of place and only her last appearance leaves any mark in ‘Operation: Kandahar’. There at least it is true that Waugh manages to raise her level of intensity in her final stretch. Not so much so that we forget that during a certain phase of the footage we could have fallen asleep or gone to the bathroom without missing anything relevant, but so that the aftertaste it leaves behind is something more positive.
What we have at the end in ‘Operation: Kandahar’ is a decent action thriller with a touch of political awareness which can be used to get by if you have mono for this type of production, but beyond that there is nothing memorable here for which the film will be remembered, because even within the Gerard Butler “genre” there are several much better ones.
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