5 Days of War

 

2 Stars

The public seems to be sick to death of war movies, especially when they're as much of a mixed bag as "5 Days of War," a hell-on-earth thriller that makes valiant gestures toward geopolitical savvy but gets bushwhacked by director Renny Harlin's weakness for the Rambo-esque. Set during the brief, brutal 2008 flare-up between Russia and Georgia, the drama has some exhilarating moments, but they're dampened by concessions to conventionally bloviating music, overly theatrical dialogue and inadvertently comic slo-mo.

As war reporter Thomas Anders (Rupert Friend) and his cameraman, Sebastian Ganz (Richard Coyle), skirt disaster after disaster, they face the difficulties of not only getting news but disseminating it: In 2008, we're reminded, the global media were too preoccupied with the Olympics to care that independent Georgia was being brutalized by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The adventure in Georgia is prefaced by a short sequence set in 2007 Iraq. There, Thomas, Sebastian and their colleague Miriam (an oddly cast Heather Graham), who also happens to be Thomas' love interest, are ambushed by terrorists; Miriam is shot dead. Almost the entire scene is captured through Sebastian's camera, raising the concern that "5 Days of War" is going to be a viewfinder movie. This worry proves unfounded; the action here, like most of the mayhem once the story reaches war-torn Georgia, is visceral and immediate.

While he displays the same kinetic compulsion of his early studio work ("Die Hard 2," "Cutthroat Island" "Cliffhanger"), Harlin also is trying to craft a character study and a political critique, and the various sides of the movie don't always mesh. Sebastian, Thomas (who's carrying a load of guilt about Miriam) and the other members of their loosely knit community of combat reporters are motivated by profit and fame.

But cynical, callous newspeople wouldn't be enough for a movie, which is why Thomas has a conscience, a calling and, eventually, another love interest: Tatia (Emmanuelle Chriqui), a Georgian educated in New York (hence the lack of accent), whose sister's wedding is attacked by Russian jet fighters. Her surviving family members become the central figures in the story Thomas risks his life to tell.

With Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" and other films that have straddled the hybrid docu-feature approach to our various Mideast calamities, audiences have come to expect a stripped-down authenticity in war films. That's one reason why "5 Days of War" seems so tone deaf: Andy Garcia does in fact look like Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, but the actor is such a well-known quantity that the casting seems like a stunt.

 

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"5 Days of War" Movie Trailer

 

MPAA rating: R (for strong bloody war violence and atrocities, and for pervasive language).

Running time: 1:53.

Cast: Rupert Friend (Thomas Anders), Richard Coyle (Sebastian Ganz), Emmanuelle Chriqui (Tatia), Heather Graham (Miriam), Andy Garcia (President Saakashvili).

Credits: Directed by Renny Harlin; written by Mikko Alanne and David Battle; produced by George Lascu. An Anchor Bay release.

 

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