Seems to be a growing trend nowadays to lead with the credentials of the director in order to get eyeballs onto a movie. That's what seems to have happened here, but once you're watching it turns out to be little better than a derivative vehicle for an unremarkable Jake Gyllenhaal who gets to tug at the heart strings on behalf of those vital interpreters (50,000 of them, apparently) who were abandoned to the Taliban when the allied forces quit Afghanistan. In this rather procedural effort, his guide "Ahmed" (Dar Salim) goes above and beyond to rescue his handler "Kinley" from ambush only to find that the American is flown home to safety, recuperation and a big steak on the barbecue. The latter man is left to reap the benefits of his sterling efforts by having a price on his head and so is forced to live in hiding. "Kinley" learns of this and decides that the man must be got out. After endless red tape seems determined to ensure that the promise made at the time to these folks to offer them fast-track American visas after the conflict was not going to be honoured any time soon, "KInley" decides he's going to have to take matters into his own hands. Remarkably, from his American home he manages to track down the elusive "Ahmed" and with the aid of a commercial extraction agency, funds a trip to get in and get his friend out. Aside from some serious plot plausibility issues, as action films go it's fine. The cinematography and pace work well to give us a sense of the danger and the relentlessness (and stealth) of the warfare that frequently nullifies the superior firepower of the visitors when faced with hostile terrain and efficient guerrilla warriors. Gyllenhaal does nothing for me here, though. He's just going through the motions, especially when required to actually act. He has become a rather one-dimensional performer (maybe it's the beard?) and though there is merit in Salim's performance as his character is allowed to mature a little by Guy Ritchie, I just felt that I'd seen the film before and the underpinning moralisation was largely undermined by the predictability of the storyline. It's certainly watchable, but it isn't hard to see why it never got a cinema release.
