Ambush review – battle fatigued Nam actioner fights worn-out war tropes – The Guardian
Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Aaron Eckhart, the big-name stars of this on-the-cheap Vietnam-war actioner, are positively on a soft quantity right here. They stay it up above floor as, respectively, an elite tracker and a no-nonsense normal, whereas poor previous Connor Paolo has to scurry round within the Củ Chi tunnel system for a lot of the operating time. Hopefully his contract demanded entry to a chiropractor.
Paolo performs US military engineer Ackermann, despatched together with his fellow “development employees” into the netherworld to retrieve a stolen labeled binder containing the names of south Vietnamese operatives undercover within the north. He’s obtained two hours to dodge the punji stake traps and get the job executed – at which level, unknown to him, Eckhart’s expedient Gen Drummond is planning to blow your complete complicated and the delicate intel together with it. Up prime, Miller (Rhys Meyers) and different particular forces goons are patrolling the forest to verify the “tunnel rats” don’t get any nasty surprises.
Ambush should be going down throughout the Vietcong annual picnic, as a result of Rhys Meyers – who imports the majority of the movie’s cool and ruefulness – has little to do apart from provide the “soulful veteran musings” aspect on the checklist of Nam cliches. Profanity-screaming superiors, wobbly greenhorn squad leaders, frazzled grunts getting into the ethical coronary heart of darkness; it’s a bit unhappy that director Mark Burman wanted two different writers to prove this perfunctorily dealt with heap of metal-fatigued tropes.
Burman’s path doesn’t assist issues both, flatly taking pictures the below-ground binder hunt in a approach that makes it appear to be the world’s longest episode of The Crystal Maze relatively than a hellishly claustrophobic expertise. The dearth of perspective is summed up in an ending that, regardless of Ackermann’s suspicion he and his crew have been designated expendable, lets the brass get away with inventory pieties: “Their blood is within the Earth. They’ll stay for ever.” It’s each by the e-book and dispiritingly obscure.
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