frosteliza Review of The Outpost

The Outpost (2019)

Gritty memorial to soldiers' valour in the face of US military command incompetence

[5/10 · 3 July 2020]

I'm not going to discuss the political aspects of this film, as it deals with them with about as much insight as John Wayne and The Green Berets does the Vietnam conflict. This film is rather more a memorial to some very brave US soldiers who lost their lives through monumental command stupidity when a 'hearts and minds' US Military Outpost was placed (even to my militarily-untrained eye) in the most ridiculous location in Afghanistan (or indeed the entire Middle East), as was apparently acknowledged both before and after the event by the US Military themselves. Based on a true story, the film is basically a record of repeated attacks on the outpost by the Taliban, and the soldiers' attempts to defend the indefensible, interspersed with the usual soldierly chit-chat and team-building. I'm not entirely convinced that the real soldiers (US Cavalry veterans) who died would be entirely happy with the way their Hollywood counterparts portrayed them - for example, that no serious effort was made to secure or patrol the surrounding heights throughout the repeated attacks, even though the attacks always came from the same place. Furthermore, the soldiers are presented as chiefly concerned with the chit-chat instead of being careful - like keeping to cover, and not strolling across an IED-lined river bridge chatting happily to your mate. For the first three quarters of the movie, the firefights are chiefly of soldiers shooting at an apparently empty hillside, and it difficult to feel compassion when someone gets killed because they are all in the same camo and helmets and you can't really tell who's who. This is something the director obviously realised post-production, as the film is heavily overlaid with titles saying who is who, and also where they are (as the location is also pretty samey). However, in the effort to be fair to all the combatants, there are just too many to remember, and the only one who really sticks is Clint Eastwood Junior, sporting a ridiculous moustache. The barrack-room backchat is heavily-scripted, un-funny and generally pointless, adding to the difficulty in caring about the characters. It may be that this is real US army-talk - regardless, it isn't entertaining to listen to. The firefights are confusing and, I suspect, grittily realistic. Unfortunately, this makes them unsatisfactory to watch as you, the viewer, have no more idea what's going on, where the enemy is, or who is shooting at who, than the soldiers themselves. In summary, the film is a sound memorial to the soldiers who died and an excellent lesson for West Point in military stupidity - but as a war-film it lacks a sharp script, necessary character development, any real insight into the Afghan conflict, or the kind of close direction required for complex battle sequences to be comprehensible.