12 Strong: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers Review

How about that for a subtitle to your movie? OK, I'm not even sure if that's an official subtitle or simply just a tagline for the movie, but when you see the movie logo, it shows up right under "12 Strong" as if it were a subtitle. Like the rest of the world, I'll simply be referring to this as "12 Strong" from here on out, but I felt like including that in my review title because that gives a pretty good description of what this movie is all about. If you don't follow movies as much as I do and this movie flew in under your radar, you might see the title "12 Strong" and have no idea what the movie is about. But when you read "The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers," that paints a pretty good image of what you're about to get yourself into. "12 Strong" is a movie that was released a couple of weeks ago, but I'm getting around to it right now because I'm behind on my January releases as I've been focusing on other things rather than seeing all the new January releases, most of which I wasn't super interested in. But "12 Strong" did have my attention and despite being late, I was interested in seeing this. And I'm glad I did because this is a pretty solid war film that chronicled an event that I didn't know much about. So I left the theater feeling educated and entertained.

As far as the "declassified true story" part of the subtitle, that's a bit deceiving. From what I've read, this was indeed a classified mission at first, but it became declassified in November 2001 when they completed the mission. So it's not this big secret thing that has just recently been revealed to the world. However, I would contend that this is a story that not many people are fully aware of. It went under the radar quite a bit until the book "Horse Soldiers" came out in 2009. There's a statue in New York City honoring the Horse Soldiers that was built in 2012 that I definitely recognize, but I'm sure that a lot of people walk by the statue without realizing its significance. Now if you're an expert on everything that's gone on in the Middle East over the last 20 years or more and you think I'm totally wrong on the idea that this is a fairly unknown event comparatively, then I apologize. In that case, I will definitively say that I had no knowledge of these events and I would predict that I'm not the only one. So I think that this is a great story to be told. We can learn about some true war heroes from the modern day that accomplished something great despite the remarkable odds stacked against them. If you're a fan of war movies like I am, this is definitely one to check out.

The first thing that this movie did for me was give me a sense of nostalgia. Not positive nostalgia necessarily, but it caused me to reflect on where I was when I learned of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. It's crazy for me when I realize that later this year we'll be commemorating the 17th anniversary of those events, meaning that there are high school kids right now who will be studying this event as history rather than something they remember as it took place before they were born. Personally I was in seventh grade. We didn't watch T.V. in the morning and social media wasn't a thing back then, so it's not like we would get a notification from our phones that told us we need turn on the T.V. to learn of what was happening. I learned of the news from my best friend as we were on the way to school. "Did you hear what happened this morning?" is essentially what he exclaimed when we picked him up. School that day was a very somber feeling as the whole school just watched the coverage on the T.V.'s in silence, the whole country being shocked at what we were witnessing. In addition to it being a very sad day for the country, I also remember the days following as very encouraging as it was one of the few times where we were all united as a country.

In "12 Strong," Chris Hemsworth plays a man by the name of Mitch Nelson, whose real name was Mark Nutsch as the movie and the book change his name for various reasons. He had recently been moved to a desk job after having previously served as a field captain of the Special Forces. He's at home with his family at the beginning of this movie when they witness the attacks on the news.  Immediately he heads over to his job and says that he needs to be put back with his team. It requires a few strings to be pulled with Hemsworth kicking over his desk, but it happens. This is what made me reflect back on that day in 2001. I was personally too young to actually do anything about it, but watching this guy's reactions gave me a strong sense of respect and patriotism towards this man. He could've stayed at his desk job, thinking that he dodged a bullet that he wouldn't be required to go out in the field. But instead his reaction is that he wants to go out in the field right now to fight for his country to prevent attacks like this from happening again. What an awesome guy! And yes, I do like looking up the real history and this is accurate to what Mark Nutsch actually did. In fact, his wife in real life was pregnant, something not portrayed in the movie, yet he still went over to fight.

The ensuing story with this crew, the elite U.S. Special Forces unit, Operational Detachment-Alpha 595 (ODA 595 for short), is a rather fascinating story. As the title of the movie informs us, there were just 12 of them and they were the first unit out in Afghanistan responding to the 9/11 attacks. The CIA gave them intel on what local leaders to work with, which led them to Afghan General Rashid Dostum, who was a bit of a sketchy dude, but was the best bet that they had. General Dostum's crew had about 200 paid Afghan soldiers. So we have around 200 men, 12 of which are Americans, going up against what was estimated to be like 50,000 Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. And how do they do this? On horseback. Because that was the best way for them to travel through the terrain of Afghanistan. Hence the nickname the Horse Soldiers. A small number of men with guns on horses attacking a large army of scary enemies with their tanks and missile-like things. The best weapon that the Horse Soldiers have are the air-strike bombers that Chris Hemsworth is directing. But the have to strategically get close enough in order to get the proper coordinates. Outside that, it's a very small army against an extremely large one, so the odds of survival are extremely low.

I don't want to give too much away about this mission because I went into this knowing very little of the specifics. I had no idea if this was a tragic suicide mission or if this was an incredible underdog story of people defying the odds to accomplish something miraculous. Or perhaps a combination of both. So I'll leave that up to you to learn what happens on your own. But I will say that the movie had my full attention throughout. A very close comparison to this movie in many ways is "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi." The titles are remarkably similar. Both movies came out in January and will make similar numbers at the box office. Both movies are about modern war stories over in the Middle East. Michael Bay did his best to try to ruin "13 Hours," but he ended up failing in that as the movie was actually really good with a phenomenal ending that had me on the edge of my seat. "12 Strong" is similar. Overall, the movie is better directed and flows more smoothly than "13 Hours," but like "13 Hours," the highlight of the movie is the final battle. We wander a bit in the middle and sometimes humor is thrown in when it didn't need to be there. But those war sequences are intense. I was on the edge of my seat with my eyes glued to the screen.

When I walked out of the theater, I had a strong feeling of patriotism. To me, that's a sign of a really good war movie, especially one that involves soldiers from your own country fighting against the enemy. We all know Chris Hemsworth plays Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, yet in this movie he plays a more important, real life hero named Mark Nutsch. What an amazing, heroic man this was! And Hemsworth does a great job in portraying him. He's one of my favorite actors because he always brings a lot of charm and charisma to his characters. With him and Michael Pena, I didn't see Thor and the funny sidekick from "Ant-Man." I saw two war heroes and I was proud of what they did and the amount of bravery it took to march out on that battle field despite the odds saying they wouldn't survive. If they were going down, they were going down for their country. But despite the odds, they were bound and determined on making it home, giving them strong motivation to keep going. This movie won't be getting any Oscars next year, but it was one of those movies where there were some Oscar-worthy performances given in an important story that's worth telling and definitely worth seeing if you are a fan of war films. My grade for "12 Strong" is an 8/10.