I enjoy war films or even ones that can at least to some degree be based on things that actually might have happened or at least events that kind of did happen. Kandahar is a Gerard Butler movie that is based on US interests in fighting against Iran or just insert whatever country you believe is an enemy of the United States into this situation... that's how kind of generic and tired this entire type of film is.
This doesn't mean the film is bad, it is just something that I believe we have seen a little bit too much of lately and I also believe that Gerard Butler's character named Tom Harris is a bit too overpowered as you would expect since he is the star of the film.
It kind of annoys me when the star of any action film is basically "untouchable" and has no weaknesses. This is something that I expect of Arnie, Jason Statham, or the Rock, but I don't like it when we see this extend to more versatile actors such as Butler. If you are unsure whether you want to watch this or not I would say that there are better Butler films to go and see such as Law Abiding Citizen, which I think is absolutely fantastic and perhaps one of Gerard's best ever.
I don't really need to give away crucial plot points for the potential viewer to understand exactly where this film is going and exactly what it is about. It's like this: USA = good, Iran and their interests = bad. Tom Harris is a CIA operative that kind of plays by his own unrestricted rules and just does whatever he wants. He is always successful and he has people who are also connected to the CIA that will assist him unilaterally without much in the way of government intervention. If this sounds like a familiar plotline then you can perhaps understand why I was a bit nonplussed by this film. It is just so overused that if they are going to do a film like this it better have some sort of unique aspect to it and while this movie is not bad, it isn't particularly good either.
Things go like you would expect in the beginning but thanks to a convenient intelligence leak Tom's identity becomes known to the vigilante assassin world and a big price is put on his head, therefore he has to escape from all the places he is in without the benefit of people not knowing his identity because well, a clearly not from Iran guy would be very difficult to identify in Iran or other parts of the world that he goes to during his mission.
The action is decent as you would expect from a film with a budget in of tens of millions of dollars and there are some very interesting characters that are introduced as well such as a Pakistani ISI super-solider than is in pursuit every step of the way.
This playboy Pakistani is by far the most interesting character in the entire film and the scenes that he is in, while ridiculous are actually pretty good and made better by his involvement in them. I give kudos to relatively unknown (at least in my world) actor Ali Fazal for making this film at least somewhat different and interesting.
Other than that this film is basically just your usual US government agent infiltrating something middle-east oriented and then needing to escape. While I am certain this is pure fiction, the place where things get a bit "normal" is because Tom finds himself needing to help a non-military interpreter escape as well once he finds out that he is a family man and blah blah blah, this has happened in many other films in the past and that is where I found the overall plot to be a bit trite.
Should I watch it?
I think this is a relatively solid film provided that you aren't looking for anything particularly new or innovative. For me, I found it to be entertaining but the reason why I am bagging on it a bit is because Hollywood always does this: once someone out there makes a little bit of money with a plotpoint, you can rest assured that other studios will do almost exactly the same thing over and over again until the public will no longer have anything to do with it.
I still think it is worth seeing but not worth going out of your way to see. I think the general public kind of agrees with my sentiment seeing as how it failed to pull in ever $10 million at the box office
I would give this film a "Maybe" rating
Kandahar is available on Amazon Prime and Vudu streaming platforms