On the final patrol of their deployment, three soldiers are ambushed by heavily armed militants, leaving them wounded, isolated, and nearly out of ammunition. Upon receiving word of the attack, their commanding officer undertakes a daring midnight-hour operation to free his men.
Pierre Morel, director of “Taken,” a great film that thankfully made Liam Neeson into an elderly action lead, returns with “The Ambush.” For “The Ambush,” Morel teamed up with all the sex trafficking bad guys from the boat finale of “Taken” to produce a propaganda film so offensive it’s almost laughable. Centering on the devastating war in Yemen, this United Arab Emirates-funded picture frames its UAE soldiers as the good guys vs. the Houthi rebel bad guys. In reality, millions of innocent Yemenis face a medieval blockade led by Saudi Arabia. “The Ambush” conveniently glosses over this significant issue, positing that the UAE soldiers are simply trying to deliver medical supplies to Yemenis but are constantly being attacked by criminal rebels. Eventually, the titular ambush kills a squad of UAE troops leaving only a trio of soldiers in a narrow rocky valley surrounded by enemies. Morel showcases a mixture of Michael Bay spectacle with shades of “Black Hawk Down” throughout.
Whenever the three soldiers speak, their lines are full of cheesy dialogue with a heavy-handed sentiment. There is a lot of “my wife” type of jokes that made me roll my eyes more than I could count. The script also gives zero background on the Houthi rebels, reducing them to running around and yelling cartoonishly with seemingly infinite numbers armed with machine guns and various explosives. Most of the action consists of the trio’s armored vehicles getting hit with improvised explosive devices and a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades.
But Morel is still a competent action director for the most part. He utilizes the blazing desert sun and the rocky terrain to drum up the tension, but his direction is undermined by the weak script and its unsympathetic leads. Knowing the situation in Yemen made it particularly hard to care for the well-funded soldiers vs. the underfunded Houthis. So I was rooting for the poor rebels. A major complaint with this and most post-Vietnam war films is where the invading soldiers are portrayed as unfortunate people who want to do the right thing and are sad over having to kill these scary foreigners (who rarely get subtitles onscreen). While “The Deer Hunter” does fall into that category, it is still a masterpiece. It transcends those xenophobic shortcomings in various ways, whereas “American Sniper” is the worst case of a film glorying an irredeemable figure and an unjust war.
One of the most interesting investigations years ago revealed how much influence the Department of Defense has in Hollywood and beyond. Whoever funded “The Ambush” has studied this media model, and who better than a Frenchman to helm an imperialist project?
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