Kandahar:  Movie Review

Cast: Gerard Butler, Tom Rhys Harries, Nina Toussaint-White, Navid Negahban
Director: Ric Roman Waugh

Kandahar is an example of a Gerard Butler film where he's at his most formulaic and restrained but yet one which his character remains eminently affable throughout.

When his CIA contractor Tom Harris is outed in Iran after helping bring down an underground nuclear plant, it's up to Butler's usual mix of muted bravery, along with his translator, to flee potential captors desperate to capture him to make an example out of on an international stage.

If this sounds familiar to Guy Ritchie's recent Prime Video outing The Covenant that's because it largely is: A fleeing man heading across desert with enemy snapping at its heels; Kandahar can't escape the comparison sadly.

But whereas The Covenant felt more urgent, Kandahar feels more laid back, its enemies draped in a sheen of under-characterisation and its drama muted to the point of horizontal.

Some efforts go into expanding some of those caught in the web, but with heavy use of foreshadowing as characters telling loved ones they'll be home soon, the drama offers nothing new in its dramatic stakes.

Nor does there feel something new in how director Butler collaborator Ric Roman Waugh expands the action. 

It's all drone shots, expansive vistas and heady explosions a plenty in a film that very much feels like the definition of rote.

Of note though is Butler who avoids any if the action histrionics here and turns in a likeable turn as the man caught in the middle - and while the region's politics are questioned and allegiances discussed, the attempt to make this murkier is commendable 

But ultimately, Kandahar feels too much like it's a film to be lost in the background noise.

Stripped of action bar a few sparse scenes and feeling like a story told many times before this is solid but unspectacular fare that will pass the time but is immediately lost in the memory the moment it ends.

Kandahar begins streaming on Prime Video from Friday August 18.