*Text from Coming Soon
WB has debuted the second trailer for 12 Strong: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers, starring Chris Hemsworth (Thor, The Avengers films) and Oscar nominee Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road, Nocturnal Animals). The new war drama, from Alcon Entertainment, Black Label Media and Jerry Bruckheimer Films, is based on Doug Stanton’s best-selling book Horse Soldiers and is the story of heroism based on true events that unfolded a world away in the aftermath of 9/11.
Award-winning director Nicolai Fuglsig directed the film, which is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Black Hawk Down), together with Molly Smith, Trent Luckinbill and Thad Luckinbill (La La Land, Sicario) under their Black Label Media banner. Oscar winner Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) and Peter Craig (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Parts 1 & 2) wrote the screenplay. The executive producers are Oscar nominees and Alcon principals Andrew A. Kosove and Broderick Johnson (The Blind Side), together with Chad Oman, Mike Stenson, Ellen H. Schwartz, Garrett Grant, Yale Badik and Val Hill.
The main cast also includes Michael Peña (The Martian, Ant-Man) and Navid Negahban (American Sniper, Homeland). Joining Hemsworth, Shannon and Peña as the “12 Strong” U.S. Special Forces team are Trevante Rhodes, Geoff Stults, Thad Luckinbill, Austin Stowell, Ben O’Toole, Austin Hebert, Kenneth Miller, Kenny Sheard and Jack Kesy. Actors portraying soldiers of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance include Laith Nakli, Fahim Fazli and Yousuf Azami, and Said Taghmaoui as a Taliban military leader. Also seen in the film are Elsa Pataky, as Nelson’s wife, and William Fichtner and Rob Riggle as U.S. Army officers.
12 Strong is set in the harrowing days following 9/11 when a U.S. Special Forces team, led by their new Captain, Mitch Nelson (Hemsworth), is chosen to be the first U.S. troops sent into Afghanistan for an extremely dangerous mission. There, in the rugged mountains, they must convince Northern Alliance General Dostum (Negahban) to join forces with them to fight their common adversary: the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies. In addition to overcoming mutual distrust and a vast cultural divide, the Americans—accustomed to state-of-the-art warfare—must adopt the rudimentary tactics of the Afghani horse soldiers. But despite their uneasy bond, the new allies face overwhelming odds: outnumbered and outgunned by a ruthless enemy that does not take prisoners.
12 Strong is slated for release on January 19, 2018.
Looks pretty generic and ‘…the most important mission in the free world…’ I gotta be honest, I chortled. Probably not the response they were trying to engender. 🙂
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Its an amazing true story but the big question is…why is this opening in January if it has any weight?
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Excellent question, deserves an excellent answer, of which I have none. 🙂
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Bah, how can I be expected to handle all of these questions without outsourcing things to my best named reader????
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Maybe the fact that one of the screenwriters wrote both parts of Mockingjay should be hidden instead of celebrated as a selling point.
Also I’m really feeling the Jerry Brukheimer in this trailer. There are war movies, and then there are action movies set during wars. I’m going to go out on a limb… I shouldn’t after just one trailer, but I will… and say this is probably more or less just an action movie set during a war. The last third of the trailer gives it away. There’s a liiiiiiitle too much gung-ho going on. I’m not saying war movies should be unpatriotic btw, or that they should all go down an Apocalypse Now/Platoon rabbit hole. Far from it. But this one looks just a tad too… driven by testosterone? Is that what I’m trying to say?
Saving Private Ryan, followed by a handful of films like Black Hawk Down, changed war movies forever, and set a new standard, and in the years since then, the path to a war film that resonates, and shakes you, has been a narrow one. Who is greenlighting this generic, repetitive waste of resources, talent, and movie theater screens?
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Sorry, I didn’t mean “driven by testosterone,” wars are kind of driven by testosterone. I guess I just meant that the filmmakers seem to want us to be having a little too much fun with all the mayhem. Maybe that’s the litmus test.
Sorry, it’s late and I am tired. Happy Thanksgiving.
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