Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (December 14, 2022)
With his second feature, director Pierre Morel managed a pretty sizable hit via 2009’s Taken. For his latest effort, we go to 2021’s combat flick The Ambush.
After a 2015 coup creates immense instability in Yemen, a multinational group comes to attempt to calm the chaos. Circa 2018, United Arab Emirates troops continue to cover the region as peacekeepers.
In February, a small patrol goes out on a routine assignment but undergoes an assault from militants. Left isolated and undermanned, their commanding officer desperately tries to rescue them.
After the success of Taken, Morel followed up with 2010’s From Paris With Love, another action thriller that featured an aging Hollywood star: John Travolta. However, whereas Taken made nine times its budget, Paris lost money despite a relatively modest $52 million cost.
2015’s Gunman - with Sean Penn and Idris Elba – fared even worse. 2018’s Peppermint failed to offer a real comeback, though at least it earned about twice its inexpensive cost.
For reasons I can’t recall, I never saw Paris or Gunman. I did view Peppermint and thought it brought a forgettable experience despite a solid lead performance from Jennifer Garner.
After all these movies with Hollywood “names”, Ambush takes Morel out on a limb, as it comes with no actors recognizable to US audiences. The French Morel seems like an odd choice for a movie shot in Abu Dhabi and starring Middle Eastern actors, but I admire the director’s willingness to change his established MO.
Too bad the film itself feels so “by the numbers”. Ambush tells a potentially interesting tale but Morel does so in a “been there, done that” manner.
Actually, the story itself comes with that same factor, as we’ve gotten umpteen tales of soldiers who battle against the odds to survive. Really, for western audiences, only the focus on Middle Eastern settings and characters give it any juice.
That becomes far too little to carry the day. While Ambush pours on the action, the roles and narrative feel too thin to bring any real life to the proceedings.
Ambush comes with the requisite superficial introduction to the various characters. Each one receives token exposition that lacks depth, so we identify them in simplistic ways at most.
This means we fail to bond with any of the roles. We reflexively root for their survival, but Ambush doesn’t develop them in a strong enough way to allow us to really attach emotion to them.
We also get skimpy discussion of their enemies. A film like this needs a pretty clear “good vs. bad” emphasis or else we struggle to care about those under assault. Since the “villains” remain sketchy, we then don’t get the concise battle lines we need.
My biggest issue comes from the repetitive nature of the movie. Most of it follows the violence that occurs after the titular attack, and this just becomes tedious after a while.
Granted, one can easily argue that a tale like this should depict similar scenes again and again. It’s not like a battle of this sort would come with a ton of variety.
Nonetheless, this means we wind up with a movie that features endless gunfire and violence to the exclusion of almost all else. Even if one wants to argue that this depicts reality, it doesn’t make for a compelling movie.
I don’t want to imply Ambush turns into a poor effort, as it gives us a professional affair. The movie simply lacks the spark and creativity it needs to separate itself from a crowded genre.
