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THE OUTPOST
Director: Rod Lurie Cast: Scott Eastwood, Caleb Landry Jones, Orlando Bloom, Jack Kesy, Cory Hardrict, Milo Gibson, Jacob Scipo, Taylor John Smith, James Jagger, Jonathan Yunger, Kwame Patterson MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:03 Release Date: 7/3/20 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 2, 2020 By a general account of soldiers, the rhythm of war is defined by lengthy periods of boredom, punctuated by moments of terror. That's the sense director Rod Lurie conveys in The Outpost, a dramatization of the real-life story of an American military outpost in Northern Afghanistan. The installation had been established in 2006, in a valley of the Hindu Kush mountain range, with the goal of preventing weapons and Taliban fighters from entering Afghanistan from Pakistan. There were at least two major problems with this outpost: 1.) It was positioned in an inherently weak spot, below the high ground of mountains where anyone and everyone could see anything and everything; and 2.) because its purpose was so vague, nobody there seemed to know exactly what the mission was or how to accomplish it in the first place. One analyst, some opening text informs us, gave the place a terribly catchy nickname: "Camp Custer." One needs only a basic knowledge of history to catch the implication, but the film explains it anyway: "Everybody at the outpost was going to die." This prophecy wasn't entirely true, of course, because, otherwise, the film probably wouldn't exist. Jake Tapper wrote a non-fiction book entitled The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, which serves as the foundation of Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson's screenplay. If everybody had died there, we'd likely be talking about a book of fiction or, at least, a non-fiction work of speculative history. A lot of soldiers did die or were wounded at the outpost, officially known as Combat Outpost Keating, and not just during the final siege by hundreds of Taliban fighters on October 3, 2009. The place seems doomed from its first introduction, as a squad of new soldiers, led by Staff Sgt. Clint "Ro" Romesha (Scott Eastwood), arrive by helicopter in the pitch-dark of night. There can't be light in this place, lest it give away the soldiers' positions to possible combatants watching from the mountain. In one of the film's many scenes of the "boredom" of war, the men sit and stand around a central location, illuminated only by tiny red lights attached to some of their uniforms. The darkness here is oppressive. The daylight isn't much better, though. That's when casual conversations and often juvenile ribbing can be suddenly interrupted by gunfire and the explosions of RPGs. The soldiers rush for cover. They fire toward the mountainside in a mostly futile gesture of defense, because their rounds, hindered by distance and gravity, won't make it up as high as the people firing down at them. Mortars are the only solution. During one patrol into the mountains after a skirmish, Romesha is asked by one of his men to explain how he, in a hypothetical position to attack the outpost, would go about his assault. Just looking down at the place through the scope of his rifle, he comes up with a quick, efficient, and deadly plan on the spot. The only things preventing the Taliban from replicating that plan are numbers, equipment, and an opportunity. Tamasy and Johnson's screenplay is quite intensive in how much detail it establishes, while still making us feel the day-to-day grind of the soldiers' waiting for the next attack, wondering if this one is going to be "the big one." It sets up the strategy of both defending and attacking the outpost, as well as fortifying the apparent lack of strategy in creating the place at all. The outpost's commander—at least the first of several—First Lt. Benjamin Keating (Orlando Bloom) serves as an introduction to a mission that only he seems to understand. It's a political one—"hearts and minds," as they say—to convince local villagers to avoid and inform the Americans about any Taliban influence. There are promises of money and work contracts, which the pragmatic commander sees as one hand extending a friendly handshake. While speaking softly to the village elders, the soldiers at the outpost are the big stick he holds in the other hand. Other commanders arrive, and one is promoted on the spot, because Keating isn't the first one this base has had. Each of them is portrayed as seemingly decent men, faced with the indecency of being placed in an impossible position of negotiating with people who fear both sides of the fight (A local informant repeatedly runs into camp, claiming the Taliban are coming, and one soldier cleverly points out that they'll know it's true when the man, along with the rest of the villagers, goes into hiding). One commander seems to understand in a way similar to Keating. Another spends all of his time in his office, handing a soldier bottles filled with urine, either in a power move or, as some of men start to consider, because he's afraid to leave a place of relative safety. All of this helps us to understand how the climactic assault—a lengthy and technically dynamic setpiece, which benefits considerably from how well the filmmakers lay out the land of the outpost—unfolds and why it happens. While the screenplay only focuses on a handful of characters (Another prominent one is Staff Sgt. Ty Carter, played by Caleb Landry Jones, who goes from being pessimistic about his comrades to, when it counts, repeatedly risking his life to save them), we at least get a sense of most of them. Most of that understanding, though, comes from the way Lurie establishes the rhythm of war in The Outpost. We're with these soldiers, through the routines and the uncertainty and the horror. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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