Director Rod Lurie's Afghan war drama—based on Jake Tapper's nonfiction book The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor—should rank with another book/film property chronicling a recent military tragedy, Black Hawk Down, and that is high praise indeed. The 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan and its grim aftermath lends the item extra piquancy.
It is a dramatization of what became known as the Battle of Kamdesh in October 2009. Combat Outpost Keating is a US military encampment built at the intersection of three Afghan mountains, in an attempt to cease the overland flow of Taliban personnel and weapons from Pakistan. But at a frightening strategic disadvantage, the crucial pass is in a valley surrounded by high ground.
At the outset of the narrative, in 2006, arriving US soldiers nickname the spot "Camp Custer," in recognition that Taliban insurgents have the commanding heights for their sniper attacks—which indeed happen with regularity and increasing danger, as the lurking enemy gains better knowledge and weapons technology, and the good-neighbor relations with resident villagers deteriorates. Finally, the Taliban attacked in a massive force.
Scott Eastwood (son of Clint), Orlando Bloom, Caleb Landry Jones, and Milo Gibson (son of Mel) lead an excellent cast whose movie-star affiliations recede into a realistic ensemble of duty-bound young fighting men who realize they are in a very bad situation (politics becomes be largely irrelevant in this context).
Viewers will want to listen to filmmaker Lurie's commentary track, in which the director (and author, who attended West Point) describes the Bulgaria-based film shoot and the fidelity and respect he tried to bring to the material and the real-life veterans portrayed, and explains that for the alterations and speculations he made in re-creating real events he tried to seek approval from the families of survivors. In an especially poignant note, he memorializes his adult son, who died stateside while Lurie was still in the progress of completing the shoot.
Other locked-loaded disc extras are rehearsal footage and behind-the-scenes mini-documentaries. A highly recommended title that fell out of public view due to the lockdown of theaters during the COVID quarantines. A must-have for library collections specializing in war and history.