While ODA 595 doesn’t have numbers, they do have access to American airpower.Įarly sections of 12 Strong show the challenges of making this alliance work, with Americans over their heads with allies who do not trust them. They have a very special mission: clear the Taliban out of its stronghold Mazar-i-Sharif, destabilizing Al Qaeda’s main allies in the country. Warner Bros.īut for the most part, audiences are watching Nelson establish first contact with General Dostum (Navid Negahban), a warlord who heads up a section of the very tenuous Northern Alliance, composed of groups who hate each other almost as much as they hate the Taliban.
Ben Milo (Trevante Rhodes of Moonlight) gets saddled with a kid following him around, for example.Ĭhris Hemsworth plays Captain Mitch Nelson in 12 Strong.
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But this is the challenge of an ensemble military movie like Black Hawk Down and The Dirty Dozen: making sure each member of the ensemble, who would be crucial in a military operation, stands out. There are some quick shots of other team members, like Sam Diller (Michael Peña) saying goodbye to home. Bowers relents, and soon their team, Green Berets Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595, is packing up to fight on the other side of the world. Assistant team leader Hal Spencer (Michael Shannon) defends Nelson despite his lack of combat experience. While Bowers doesn’t want Nelson to go into this new war, Nelson’s team stands up for him. It’s September 11, and Mitch has to get back to the office.
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This lasts precisely until they change the TV channel from cartoons. They’re in a state of bliss, especially since Mitch has landed a safe desk job under Lt. Based on the true story Horse Soldiers, the movie follows a Special Forces operation in the months immediately following 9/11, a moment when polling for such a move ranged between 70 and 90 percent approval.Īfter a quick montage highlighting previous Al Qaeda attacks right up to September 9, 2001, the movie takes us to Kentucky, where Captain Mitch Nelson (Chris Hemsworth) is unpacking boxes with his wife and young daughter. If ever there was a moment where the United States could have been seen as heroes riding in on horseback, it was in the immediate aftermath of Osama Bin Laden’s attacks. It’s in this brief moment that Nicolai Fuglsig’s 2018 movie 12 Strong takes place. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban’s Kandahar stronghold was about to fall to its Northern Alliance antagonists.” Although Ackerman notes the U.S political leadership “sneered at negotiations” with its enemies, a potential peace was possible. As war reporter Spencer Ackerman noted in The Daily Beast in 2020, “Not two months after the U.S. Would-be refugees hung on to planes for dear life. Atrocities were rampant, both on the part of the United States and the Taliban. After a 20-year occupation and thousands of Western coalition and Afghan forces dead, the Taliban was able to retake the country at lightning speed. By the time America entirely withdrew from Afghanistan on August 21, 2021, it was hard to feel like much had been accomplished.