Operation Kabul arrives on Digital beginning November 3 from Well Go USA.
The last ten years of geopolitics will be some of the most defining yet, particularly with the consequential actions of U.S. “leadership”. Director Zsombor Dyga’s latest, Operation Kabul, articulates this reminder aptly in filmic fashion, highlighting the efforts of coalition forces to rescue hundreds of people from an airport in Kabul following the chaos that followed the withdrawal of NATO from Afghanistan.
Central to the story is coalition soldier Balint (Gabor Jászberényi) who befriends a respected physician named Ezther (Blanka Meszaros) after courting her in an armed convoy to a village. Their friendship is chronicled throughout the film in a story that toggles between its two-year time frame, with the latter now finding Ezther on deck to fly back to Hungary when her protective instincts kick in, compelling her to rush off of her bus at the last minute to aid a child patient named Fariha (Klarissza Lakatos).
It’s not long after Ezther and Fariha return back to the hospital that their respite peace explodes into a wave of violence when the Taliban descend unto the facility in search of a target. Trapped behind enemy lines and moments away from Taliban capture, Ezther’s end of tenure turns into a race against time to assure Fariha’s safety which, provided she can reach safe haven at the fortified Hungarian airport entrance, may be Balint’s only chance of rescuing Ezther no matter the cost.
This all basically sums up what to expect in Operation Kabul, which is one of several films and projects spotlighting the tumult that occurred in 2021. For this, you get a propulsive, dramatic war thriller that checks all the boxes if films like these are more your speed. The acting and action all measure up, and you also get a few amiable and interesting supporting performances, including by Tamás Borovics as Lt. Colonel Herceg, and co-star Adrián Samudovszky who plays Ahmed, a translator with his own agenda for helping the Hungarians.
The action balances out pretty well with the drama and meets all the expectations you might have for a war film, and you get some satisfying and exciting moments along the way, including one in which a female Hungarian soldier defies orders to respond to a mother to save a crowd being tear gassed by the Afghan Army. The final twenty minutes picks things up pretty well as Balint and his team infiltrate the Taliban to rescue Ezther, while Herceg works a roundabout means to provide an exit for the rest of the near 400 diplomats, aid workers and translators and their families.
The finale in Operation Kabul unravels with a ton of chaos and violence and speaks a little less to the resolve a film like this one calls for. It reminds me of the ending of Skin Trade, in that peace was hardly the goal, but that’s the basic gist of real world combat in all its hardships. It leads to an albeit satisfying conclusion that, despite its choice in music, doesn’t undercut just how hard everything became right down to the bitter and bloody end for these troops. Earnestly, under strategy from a more suitable commander-in-chief, our alliances in the world wouldn’t still be under scrutiny.
