"The Outpost"
directed by Rod Lurie
(R, 2 hours, 3 minutes)
"The Outpost" is a wrenching war thriller that has absorbed the lessons of documentaries like Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's "Restrepo," and fiction films like Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," and Oliver Stone's "Platoon."
Army Combat Outpost Keating was in the remote Hindu Kush, at the foot of three steep mountains in eastern Afghanistan 14 miles from the Pakistan border. On Oct. 9, 2009, a force of more than 400 Taliban fighters attempted to overrun Bravo Troop 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, a group of 53 American soldiers stationed there. After a 12-hour firefight, eight Americans were dead and 27 were wounded. About 150 Taliban fighters were killed.
Bravo Troop became one of the most decorated units in the Afghanistan war, with two living service members receiving the Medal of Honor from the same battle for the first time in 50 years.
Though they held off the Taliban, the troops withdrew from the outpost shortly afterward, in accordance with Coalition Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's strategy of ceding remote outposts to the enemy and consolidating troops in more populated urban areas.
So Bravo Troop was defending an outpost the Coalition really didn't want, a situation straight out of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22," which drew from the author's experiences as a bombardier during World War II.
While "The Outpost" is based on CNN anchor Jake Tapper's best-selling 2012 book of the same title, director Rod Lurie wisely concentrates on the men of Bravo Troop, notably on the arrival of three newcomers; as one of them finds his bunk, he notices the words "It doesn't get better" carved into a piece of nearby timber.
They are bored, agitated young men who quickly cycle through teasing, resentment and flaring hostility as they wait for the inevitable attack. It's sometimes difficult to tell the individual soldiers apart, but their interchangeability might be the point.
Orlando Bloom plays base commander Capt. Ben Keating, Scott Eastwood plays Staff Sgt. Clint Romesha (one of the Medal of Honor winners) and always watchable Caleb Landry Jones plays Sgt. Ty Carter (the other Medal of Honor winner). Milo Gibson, son of Mel, shows up as one of the company.
While the first half of the film is technically impressive, with Lurie's camera snaking through the claustrophobic quarters of the camp and catching the desperation in the men's macho bravado, the dialogue, while naturalistic, feels flat and forced, like a party that's running out of steam.
Then the full-powered horror of war breaks in.
Given the circumstances of its release -- to digital outlets because of the ongoing covid-19 lockdown of most theaters -- it's unlikely that "The Outpost" will do much to significantly raise Lurie's profile among general audiences.
But it is one of the best American films to be released in this odd year, honoring the sacrifice of ordinary men called to extraordinary service while refusing to ignore the inhumanity of old heads who send young people off to lonely, rocky places to die for high ideals.
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