‘Ambush Review: Movie Stars Steal Foot Soldiers Valor
With a compelling premise, compelling ensembles, and often smart and engaging filmmaking, Mark Boorman's Ambush could almost be considered a great Vietnam-era film were it not for the under-par performances of the two actors. This name. the highest in its credit block. Usually complex and entertaining even in these secondary roles, Aaron Eckhart and Jonathan Rhys Meyers play characters detached from the main narrative, while Connor Paolo, Gregory Sims, Jason Genao and others take on the rest of the storytelling burden. more desirable partner. . - the stars have changed salaries.
Still smarter and funnier than one would expect from such a shallow, small-scale story, Ambush feels like a throwback, mostly in a good way, to the Namsploitation movies that companies like Cannon sent out in the 1980s. when war stories became commercially popular.
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Paolo plays a corporal. Ackerman, a young, educated but inexperienced commander from a small outpost in Quang Tri Province, becomes a hotbed of conflict when Viet Cong troops arrive out of nowhere to find files containing vital information about their secret agents stolen by the US Army. spy Though the captain. Mora (Sims), who was originally sent to the camp after receiving a binder, manages to help Ackerman fend off waves of enemy fighters by assigning them to his superior, a general. Drummond (Eckhart), on a mission to his adversary in the jungle, maps a network of underground tunnels that will allow them to surprise American forces and restore communications or destroy all evidence of its existence. To help them, Drummond also sends Miller (Meyers), a detective with a dog who "thinks outside the box".
Moran sends Ackerman underground with his crew, a group of mostly fresh and frightened engineers with little to no combat experience, while Miller searches the surface for traces of the Viet Cong. Determined to prove himself both to himself and to his people or superiors, Ackerman navigates his journey through a maze of tunnels, occasionally encountering armies of enemies that force him to make split-second life-or-death decisions. solution. But when Drummond decides to limit the hunt to a difficult two-hour window in the woods or underground, Ackerman races towards his target despite Maura's friend Crawford (Mc Brandt) being ordered to make sure no trace of the mission remains. still. after the expiration date - passed or not.
Written by Berman, Johnny Lozano and Michael McClung, Ambush uses the timeless image of the "man on a mission" to explore underground warfare, a phenomenon that was rare before the Vietnam War but has featured in many films since. . , from "Troops" to "Losses in the war" and dozens of others. Historically and thematically, this allows Birman to explore multiple levels of military decision-making, from the transmission of orders by high command along the chain of command to soldiers fighting for their lives in the trenches (or, for that matter, by hand). system of dug tunnels), while the action takes place on a variety of backgrounds: light and dark, spectacular and intimate, tropical and dirty. What he also inadvertently did was show the division of labor in movies between named "stars" and lesser-known character actors who work hard to look good with little credibility.
Paolo, who started his career as a child version of Kevin Bacon and Colin Farrell's characters in Mystic River and Alexander, is undeniably the star of the movie, and he plays with the same intelligence and much more confidence. as his excited engineer ordered his men. Boorman takes Ackerman on a journey of nuance and emotional clarity as he faces the grim realities of battle and the difficult task of leadership, while Paolo manages his ambitions, doubts, flaws and growth with extraordinary content. In comparison, Meyers gave Hunter Miller a much milder edge than expected, but otherwise spent more time arguing with his handler than showing off to his comrades, while Eckhart appeared exclusively on shortwave radio in the bunker, which he likely did not. closer to the setting of any other Colombian film than audiences will ever see.
Boorman and his co-writers, perhaps anticipating how little help they would receive from actors whose names could help finance the film, did a better than average job of incorporating the consequences of the characters' questionable decisions into their stories. Mora's negligence. . . being tied up multiple times seems worthy of a performance test or even a court martial. But when the grubby engineers go into battle, Genao, Jaime Lopez, Luke Stanton Eddy, Matt Martinez and the rest of the cast more than survive as they travel through the intricate, endless system of tunnels where every turn can lead: they face enemies. far more willing to kill them than otherwise.
By far Boorman's biggest credit to date was his role as producer in Paul Schroeder's 2016 film Dog Eats Dog, but in the director's chair he deftly plays with different landscapes and, most importantly, without sensationalism; Ackerman's camp or the dark melee between him and his men underground, he creates vivid, purposeful images that fuel the story and create real tension. At the same time, in a story whose code tries to reconcile the futility of individual sacrifice with some specific jokes about eternal life as part of something larger, there is no small irony in the fact that a group of (mostly) new faces appears before it. . . . together. , instead of meekly carrying the water of my tent mates, I followed them every step of the way.
But while this movie can't match the quality or seriousness of Vietnamese battleships like The Deer Hunter or Full Metal Jacket, Ambush is ultimately a more believable adventure than its downfall. - and more than a handful of real sensations.
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