Bullet Points: Ambush (2023)
People love a good throwback. All the kids are still buying old Jordan’s and the people who wear hats are always looking to buy some throwback headwear. The professional sports teams are bringing back more and more “throwback jerseys” and whenever I see my ex I remember some of those “throwback titties”. The point is that what was once old can sometimes be new again. To a guy like me that is super exciting. Especially when it comes to movies. Give me 80’s action films over any of this superhero/remake business we have now. In fact, chasing nostalgia was exactly the reason for watching this movie. Let’s hope it brings back those old feelings…
Synopsis: A group of young elite commandos, led by General Drummond are tasked with collecting highly classified information that can change the fate of the war.
- The Set up: It’s Vietnam, 1966, and the United States has somehow found its way into a war that it probably shouldn’t be in. Imagine that….This time, though, our cast of characters include General Drummund (Aaron Eckhart), Colonel Miller (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and Corporal Ackerman (Connor Paolo) as American soldiers attempting to locate and destroy a binder full of very sensitive information. While that may seem easy, this binder falls into the hands of the North Vietnamese Army and its vast complex of underground tunnels.
- Send for the Man: Drummond sends a couple of Special Forces teams after this mysterious binder that can’t fall into the hands of the enemy. Of course, once the team locates and acquires the binder, it becomes target along with anyone around it. That includes Connor Paolo’s Corporal Ackerman. He’s just a lowly Engineer trying to get this new base built out in the middle of nowhere. He’s got a token force of men with him and none of them seem too thrilled at their new importance at the center of the fighting. There’s also this guy named Crawford that is hand-picked by Drummond to help out.
- You have my interest: The film starts off without much wasted time. That doesn’t mean that the action kicks off immediately but that we get a very brief introduction to a few of the characters and what the mission is going to be. Then, WHOOSH! We’re off and running. It felt very much like the opening scenes in Predator. Dutch lands in his chopper and gets the mission briefing. We met him, Dillon, and the General in a matter of minutes and the rest just flows from there. That was the feeling I had with Ambush. Aaron Eckhart spent the entirety of his scenes giving orders mostly by radio. While that isn’t the most thrilling part of an action film, it did kind of work here.
- Under Attack: The standout scene for me was the actual ambush that the base finds itself under. It gives all the characters the chance to show their war faces and allows Ackerman to finally get a little respect to his name after he hops up on a machine gun and delivers the goods.
- Finding the binder: Once the binder makes it back into the hands of the enemy, it’s up to the newly introduced Colonel Miller (JRM) to lead his men and his dog to the package and either take it back or destroy everything. Meyers is pretty rad in the role and gave me a veteran feel like Willem Dafoe always brings to roles. Meyers has been on somewhat of a role when it comes to films of this budget type and I think it fits his style of acting very well. He commands the search teams from above ground while Ackerman and his team crawl around in the tunnels.
- Crawford and the rest: The real search for the package begins once they get underground and Ackerman and his team quickly learn that the NVA have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves. The mysterious Crawford eventually makes his way into the tunnel and does his best version of a “bull in a china shop” but with a flamethrower in a tunnel. This might be the scene that best describes the film in terms of its storytelling. It doesn’t try to comment on the war or the men that fight in it. No one really questions why they have to find the binder or what it means to sacrifice for someone on the other end of a radio. BUT, it does have a guy firing a flamethrower in a tunnel! It’s that type of Vietnam War film.
The Verdict: There are a lot of different things going through my head having just watched Ambush. It started off giving me very Predator-esque feelings with the way it started and the quick introduction to a few of the characters. The biggest problem coming from that was that some of those characters didn’t spend much time on screen and then our plot slowly morphed into something that could be best described as a Mcguffin search. Connor Paolo handled a large part of the onscreen work since Ackerman became the centerpiece of this shit-show of a mission, but it wasn’t his fault the movie slowly divulges into a bit of a mess. Paolo transforms from the green Corporal somehow in charge of a small base into a green Corporal who has been put in charge of a Top Secret mission with massive implications. None of it really makes that much sense in terms of actual military strategy or troop deployments, but the film looks and sounds like a winner and ultimately that is all that matters. It certainly helps that you have veteran actors like Aaron Eckhart and Jonathan Rhys Meyers to help out but they never become the focus. It’s more about the claustrophobic journey of one young and unexpecting hero. If you like movies based around Vietnam War activity and have an affinity for dudes crawling around in tunnels, this is the movie for you.
