As war movies go, Precious Roy is pretty certain 12 STRONG has got four good legs on it!
Hey folks, Precious Roy here! We napped on last week’s turkey and are just getting around to some of these trailers…
I’ve just had a look at 12 Strong. It’s the True Story© of the U.S. Special Forces team that was first to strike back immediately following the 9/11 attacks. Their mission was to try and unite U.S. forces with the Northern Alliance, to push back on the Taliban.
(The backstory here is that the U.S. helped train the Afghans to use their terrain to their advantage, back when they were resisting Russian invasion. Americans were seen as meddlers who abandoned the Afghans once we didn’t need them. So, long before 9/11, no love lost.)
We sent in our high-tech Special Forces soldiers on a mission to hostile terrain, where we couldn’t supply them; they had to learn to fight the Taliban on horseback. Outnumbered, they fought both to achieve an accord with the Northern Alliance and to survive, to return home to their families.
There have been so many war movies in recent years that 12 STRONG seems to reference… BLACK HAWK DOWN, ZERO DARK THIRTY, 13 HOURS. The interesting hook here seems to be the horseback combat and the freshness of the attack. It was over a year after the Twin Towers fell before Iraq was invaded, but 12 STRONG takes place in the wake of 9/11, when the grief, anger, and hurt are fresh for these soldiers. Those who study warfare and combat know that it has been a very long time since Americans—seen to the world often as ‘cowboys’ from films—have attempted mounted combat. And one of the key scenes in this film is a full cavalry charge. I can’t even imagine how cool that will look in IMAX.
The cast looks good: Michael Shannon, Chris Hemsworth, Michael Pena, Trevante Rhodes, William Fichtner, and Rob Riggle. I’d watch Fichtner in just about anything, but Hemsworth, Rhodes, and Pena make pretty convincing soldiers. I had no idea this charge occurred, but it’s been sculptured at the 9/11 memorial… so I’m looking forward to seeing us, not in a pointless revenge scheme that our intel was off on anyways, but 12 men standing against 50,000 like modern Spartans.
12 STRONG charges into theaters January 19th!
Precious Roy out!
