Thursday 14 March 2013

Codename: Geronimo (aka Seal Team Six: The Raid On Osama Bin Laden)



Patriot Games

A strange film to watch and an even stranger film to review, Codename: Geronimo is better than it has a right to be.  It’s still not great but it’s not the Blackhawk crash you’re expecting. 

Beating Kathryn Bigelow’s similarly themed Zero Dark Thirty to the punch and sensitively retitled Seal Team Six: The Raid On Osama Bin Laden in the US so it wouldn’t offend Native Americans who still revere renegade Apache leader Geronimo as a national hero (and, if a century of Westerns has taught us nothing else, one group you want to piss off less than Al Qaeda, is the Apaches), Codename: Geronimo comes to UK screens fresh from its TV screening in the US where executive producer Harvey Weinstein, a Democrat and Obama supporter, controversially ensured the film went out on the National Geographic channel just TWO DAYS before the Presidential Election leading to accusations of partisanship by the disgruntled Republican camp.

Starring the kind of actors that will no doubt elicit vague recognition from audiences who watch a lot of Channel 5 (“Hey!  Isn’t that what’shisname from CSI/NCIS/Prison Break?”) and, you know, that guy who shagged Stifler’s Mom (Eddie Kaye Thomas), Codename: Geronimo chronicles the lead up to and raid by US Navy SEALs on the fortified compound in Pakistan where the World’s Most Wanted Man™ and the West’s boogeyman du jour, Osama Bin Laden, was hiding in pain sight under the not exactly inquisitive noses of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services.

A largely tension-free exercise, let’s face it, we know the Americans shot him in the face and dumped his body at sea, Codename: Geronimo focuses on the CIA analysts who figured out where Bin Laden was hiding and the SEAL team who carried out the mission.  So we have a spunky, highly strung CIA agent (Kathleen Robertson), who’s effectively Carrie from Homeland without the personality disorders and love of jazz (or the compulsion to f*ck her suspects), trying to convince her colleagues (the always wonderful William Fichtner and the bloke who shagged Stifler’s mom) that the lanky Arab living anonymously in a Pakistani neighbourhood is the same lanky Arab terrorist they’ve been hunting for a decade. 

Then there’s the SEALs who to this day remain anonymous.  They’re a pretty anonymous bunch in the film too, conforming wonderfully to our stereotypical notions of men on a mission.  There’s the prettyboy leader (Twilight’s Cam Gigandet), there’s the Hispanic one (Six Feet Under’s Freddy Rodriguez), there’s the Black one (Xzbit in the obligatory faded rapper playing a soldier role) and there’s the cool, laconic, sexy one (Anson Mount).  They train a bit; lots of night-vision assisted clearing of dark rooms.  They play computer games.  Mount boffs Gigandet’s drunken slattern wife.  They fall out but everyone sets aside their differences and pulls together for the big raid.  The bad guy gets killed and the world is made safe for Truth, Justice and the American Way.

The script by the wonderfully monickered Kendall Lampkin manages to suck much of the drama from this drama-documentary but thankfully it’s not too flag-wavingly patriotic and the actors are all fine, if unmemorable, with only the charismatic Mount leaving any kind of impression.  With his long hair and grizzled features Mount, who obviously wasn’t able to shave or cut his hair due to filming commitments on TV Western Hell On Wheels, is the only one who actually looks like a SEAL, who are all rather hirsute, as opposed to his clean-cut colleagues.  The workman-like direction by John Stockwell (best known for thrillers where actresses like Jessica Alba, Melissa George and Kate Bosworth model bikinis) is effective with most of the action scenes lent a videogame immediacy by being shot first-person from the perspective of the SEALs’ helmet cameras (even the team’s attack dog has his own night-vision camera attached to his collar).  It all feels a little like watching an online walk-through of the latest Medal Of Honour.

Effective but by-the-numbers, Codename: Geronimo’s natural home is on TV but at least it’s better than this year’s ludicrous SEAL recruitment movie Act Of Valor. 

David Watson

Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Genres:
Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Language:
English
Runtime:
97 minutes
Certificate:
15
Rating:
2/5
UK Cinema Release Date:
Friday 14th December
UK DVD Release Date:
24th December

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