The good guys, bad guys & many whys

Parbina Rashid

Sermon number 1: Ali Fazal’s character Kahil, a Pakistani assassin, lectures a group of Taliban on how their penchant for taking selfies with beheaded bodies, and stopping little girls from going to school have given them bad publicity.

Sermon number 2: Kahil (again!), while on a hot pursuit of his target, tells a young boy, who turns out to be a staunch Taliban supporter, to read the Quran himself rather than believing the Taliban’s interpretation.

Sermon 3: CIA operative agent Tom Harris (Gerard Butler) tells his translator Mo, short for Mohammad, how ‘they’ (presumably he speaks for the West) meddle in other countries’ internal affairs, tell their people how to live their life, what to believe in, what culture to follow and never even stop to thank people like Mo…

All these sermons come amid blazing guns and choppers whizzing past, spraying bullets, and bombs going off sporadically as Tom and Mo run against time to catch a US flight out of the country with the Taliban, an Iranian hound, motorcycle-borne Kahil and a Tajik militia group hot on their trail. Well, how is it for an actioner?

The movie opens with Tom, a freelance agent contracted by the CIA, working undercover as a Swiss telecom company operator, who has sabotaged an Iranian nuclear power plant. So far, so good! Though the sabotage scene is not something applause-worthy, it holds promise when his handler Roman (Travis Fimmel) asks Tom to take a second assignment in Herat, Afghanistan. A new Afghanistan but which, to borrow Tom’s expression, is ‘same as the old one’.

It does not need much convincing from Roman for Tom to go to Herat and miss his flight to London to attend his daughter’s convocation despite his wife (soon going to be his ex-wife) warning him repeatedly to be on that scheduled flight. In fact, we don’t even come to know why he says ‘Yes’ to Roman except that he is offered enough cash to take care of his ‘daughter’s medical education’. Really?

All hell breaks loose when his cover is blown after Luna, a journalist (Nina Toussaint-White), who is privy to classified information leaked from the Pentagon, is captured by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in her hotel room.

And then the chase begins. One unimpressive event gives way to the other, one forgettable battle paves way for the next, making us wonder as too many cooks spoil the broth, do too many villains spoil the plot? It seems so. I, for one, would root for one strong villain for a wholesome thrilling experience.

What did director Ric Roman Waugh intend to convey by making it a potpourri of villainous characters remains an enigma even after the credit rolls! Was Waugh trying to explore the complexities of the Middle-East’s geopolitics with special reference to Taliban’s reign of terror, or was it simply Tom and Mo’s mission to go home? The latter seems more plausible an explanation.

And in that case, Waugh could have cut down on the run-time from 120 minutes to 60 minutes, as anyway Butler as Tom looks quite jaded to continue with the run. The two characters that make an impact are Mo, with his emotional connect, and Ali, who looks dashing against the stunning terrain superbly captured by cinematographer MacGregor. They are the only reason I stayed on Tom’s trail from beginning till the end, along with, well, the Taliban, the Iranians, the Pakistanis, ISIS, the Tajik militia group and what not!