12 Strong

12 Strong (2018) follows a twelve man American Special Forces team sent into Afghanistan immediately after 11 September. They work alongside the Northern Alliance and, because vehicles cannot cross the terrain, they move on horseback. What the film does well is take that strangeness seriously: men directing airstrikes by satellite link while sitting in a saddle. The story is real. The unit was Task Force Dagger and the source is Doug Stanton's book Horse Soldiers. There is a monument to it in New York, a statue of a mounted soldier placed near the World Trade Center. Nicolai Fuglsig directed, coming from documentary photography and commercials. Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon and Michael Peña lead. It runs 130 minutes. Good for: modern war films, adaptations of real events, and the sheer oddity of cavalry. Less good for: the Afghan characters mostly support the Americans' story. Nothing is said about what came afterwards; the film ends in 2001 and that closure looks far too clean from here.