Rod Lurie's film recreates a real life battle from 2009. First it spends half its run time introducing us to the soldiers, making them human, before it spends its second act making them fight for their lives. The Outpost walks a very fine line between glamorizing these men and their situation and telling a very human tragedy. It is a fascinating portrait of the cost of war.
When we first meet the small group of soldiers manning the titular outpost in Kamdesh, Afganistan the film explicitly tells us their names which appear on screen in text to make sure we don't miss them. Some of these men say homophobic or misogynistic things, and many exhibit quite toxic masculinity traits, but as we watch them for longer we see the very human people they are underneath all the bravado their wear as shields for the horror they face. This isn't to say the film excuses them. The Outpost doesn't try to justify their bad behavior, or their treatment of each other, but paints the whole portrait of who they are as flawed humans in a terrible situation. We watch them under fire every day, interacting with each other in all their messed up ways. It makes us see them, really see them, before they are to attacked.
The Outpost tells us at the beginning there is going to be a great deal of death and injury. That's the point of this story, to put the lives of those who die for our causes on display. We are put in a position where we have to wrestle with whether our crusades are worth the costs. We create a hell and people die for it and this film makes us watch it. Lurie doesn't blink. These men do heroic things. They do horrific things They are neither blameless or solely to blame. He spends time getting through all our biases, both positive and negative, to the soldiers of Kamdesh. Nothing is black and white.
And then comes the battle.
The second act of the film is an intense reenactment of a siege which is bloody, soul destroying, and deadly. It isn't candy coated patriotism designed to make us glorify what goes on in the name of "freedom." It is as honest as possible a portrait of the truth that war is hell. And we have just spent this time getting to know these men only to watch them die horribly. Any nation that asks its young people to go to war should watch something approximating what they go through. The Outpost attempts to do that.
The Outpost
Starring: Scott Eastwood, Caleb Landry Jones, Orlando Bloom, Jack Kesy, Corey Hardrick, Milo Gibson, Jacob Sipio, Will Attenborough, Alfie Stewart
Director: Rod Lurie
Writers: Eric Johnson, Paul Tamasy
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