Kandahar(Prime Video)
Rating: **
Gerard Butler’s comeback is like that unwanted guest whom you don’t really want in your house. But what to do? You have to be nice to a guest , no? Butler is lately seen in so many action flicks that one tends to confuse one for the other.
As far as I remember, in his last film Plane Butler had to reach his daughter (hence the plane, duh). In Kandahar(no relation to Mrinal Sen’s Khandhar) Butler plays a CIA agent whose flight to his daughter’s graduation is diverted so he can carry out one more assignment.
A ho and a hum to that .
The set-piece action sequences are nothing to write ‘Om’ about(Om , as in Om Raut). We’ve seen better. The film conveys the brewing tension of a simmering pot of coffee that never percolates properly. Ric Roman Waugh who has directed Butler in the past, seems to have little to do. Most of the plot is directed by the action directors.
The screenplay by Mitchell LaFortune is unnecessarily tangled. It’s like a cabbie taking his tourist passenger through the long road to make some extra bucks.
Bucks remind me of fucks. Ali Fazal—yes, he is also part of the film, but no need to rejoice – uses the ‘F’ word thrice in his introductory scene of three minutes. Come to think of it, Fazal is the only who uses abusive language . Even the Talibanis seem quite well-behaved.Maybe they just got scared that Butler would have their roles cut short even shorter.
There are interesting supporting actors in the fringes of the plot who are never allowed to grow into the main conflict. Butler holds centrestage.I am not too sure he is the right man for the job.But he does have the attitude of a man who means business even when he doesn’t know what exactly he is supposed to be doing.
Everyone tries to look important in Kandahar. It’s like a terrain of tuxedoed tycoons waiting to be told where there next big fortune is coming from.