Today's movie was Mosul, an Iraqi movie on Netflix about a rogue SWAT team battling ISIS invaders in their hometown.
It's a pretty dark and gritty film, but seemed like a pretty accurate portrayal of modern urban combat. I'll give it a 7.5 out of 10. What's even more heart-wrenching is that it's based on a true story.
I could really use a break from "serious" films like this one, and could really use something more lighthearted and without English subtitles
Mosul 08/10
For those who appreciate heroic war films, and want to see how the local forces developed to carry the fight in Iraq. It has so much verisimilitude, I haven't had a decent meal in a week, keep spitting out grit from my teeth.
Rates just below the group of films that includes Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan, We Were Soldiers Once and Young.IMHO.
"When ISIS took their homes, families and city, one group of men fought to take it all back. Based on true events, this is the story of the Nineveh SWAT team, a renegade police unit ( "renegade" because they can't be bought by the regular Police Commander to look the other way) who waged a guerrilla operation against ISIS in a desperate struggle to save their home city of Mosul."
I have watched
Mosul -
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9252468/
on the back of these two recommendations.
"Based on true events", Mosul is the story of Kawa, a 20yo boy who has just joined the police force in the derilic town of Mosul, Iraq. The film starts in media res, with Kawa and his partner being attacked by ISIS fighters. As the situation becomes desperate, a group of Iraqi police, calling themselves SWAT, rescue them and kill the ISIS fighters.
Young Kawa is quickly recruited into this commando team. The story unfolds with the SWAT on their way to a mission objective, with Kawa in tow.
While Kawa is the protagonist, he is very much a Luke Skywalker, caught between both events and also characters greater then him. There is a character arc, but despite him being the protagonist, it's not about him.
This is a pure war film, very similar to Black Hawk Down, and the focus of the film is on the realism of war.
The film is entirely in Arabic (subs available), and shot and acted pretty well (the Iranian colonel was not great). Aside from a couple of bad camera scenes, it's well done.
Now.. based on that, i would give the film a 7.5/10 - it's entertaining, well made, and most important in such films, i never felt that any of the characters were immune to being killed, even the "hero". In one scene, i even .. felt worried. So, props for that.
I did read the reviews on IMDb, which i encourage you do to as well - because i was curious why the score was not as high as i expected it to be. Apparently, there's many 1/10 reviews stating that the facts depicted are not true, that *some other Iraqi faction* did all the works, etc.
There's also some comments on the actual Arabic dialogue being bad, which i wouldn't know as i only read the subs.
I wouldn't expect Netflix to do a proper docu-drama, and yes we should care, because a thing that detracts from a film like this is that war film,. more so those based on real events, are allowed to be limited in scope. In fact, Wikipedia lists it as a "action" film (it's not). You do this when you need to tell a specific story, and are not allowed to embellish it. But if you dont, and you just have a bunch of guys going pewpew in rubble, then it's your shortcoming for not writing a more interesting script. And, the story here is pretty simple, if well made, but it's not the type of story you would expect from Saving Private Ryan. I would say that it's actually quite close to American Sniper, minus all the at-home bullshit.
Anyway, i would imagine your opinion would vary a lot depending on how the events depicted affect you. BUT, since it's just all us yanks here, i think your vote will be:
7.5/10