Sadly Over-hyped

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Having served this film is often too painful to watch (the reason for my giving it a 9/10). It expresses the suffering and comradeship of warfare. This isn't just a film it's an education for a society disassociated from war. For those critics war isn't glorious or romantic. It's dirty and boring, and yes, people screw up. If you're stuck in a minefield without all the Gucci kit it's a bayonet and you're belt buckle, and it's hot and tiring and you make mistakes. Soldiers (at least the Toms) don't speak received English (so maybe you might have to pay more attention to what is being said)and yes they swear, live with it! There are plenty of wonderful war films where the (usually American) protagonists win the day with either a fashionable injury or glorious death; this isn't one of them. There is however humour and pathos in war and this expressed in loads. If everyone knew what war was really like nobody would want anything to do with one.

The film starts off slowly, it is low budget with some unknown actors giving it a naturalistic setting, but it really drags you in and at times you really want to close your eyes as the bombs keep going off and you hear the men scream.Kajaki is based on a true story, set in Afghanistan in 2006, a British army unit is providing security at a Hydro electric dam.The area is looming with minefields not from the post 2001 invasion but from the Soviet invasion in 1979. Some of the soldiers go to checkout an illegal Taliban checkpoint and are trapped and injured after stepping on a mine.The other soldiers need to go and rescue them but they need to avoid stepping into the mines, a rescue helicopter is called but they do not know that the vibrations of the blades could set off the mines and the chopper cannot land or winch the injured soldiers.Over the course of the film, the injuries increase, even the injured soldiers get re-injured, we get to learn more about the characters and their bravery.This is brutal uncomfortable viewing, there is some humour, some of it is bleak, one of the soldiers was in immense pain as the morphine did not work on him as he was allergic to it.

The film is definitely very, very realistic; and that is what makes it very, very boring. With all respect for the real victims of that action, I am still bound to review a movie, and the paradox is that the movie pays a big price to hyper-realism; essentially, you see three men jumping on three mines on a goat track at the bottom of a valley in Afghanistan, and you then spend a hour and half watching them suffer, bleed, scream. The camera indulges very often in very realistic and crude close up of truncated legs, arms, fingers and various injuries. The reality of the action must have been absolutely dramatic, and the courage of some of the soldiers remarkable; unfortunately, this does not make a good movie.

Knowing the story beforehand I was curious to see how the makers of this film could come up with a well rounded movie.Unfortunately, they didn't. After a very short introduction to the main characters, all with strong British accents which even I had trouble understanding (British born Australian), we are taken to the minefield. Yes I jumped a couple of times, but then found there was no pace. There was too much unedited conversation and no action or tension.It is a shame that the film makers didn't provide more background, showing how tough you have to be, to be a British Paratrooper, and some of the previous actions they had been involved in leading up to the mines. This would have probably conveyed more the futility of being killed or wounded by Russian mines planted many years earlier. Just showing realistic portrayals of mine strikes does not a great movie make.