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5 Days Of War (Film)
Rating: MA
Running Time: 112
Country: USA
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Emmanuelle Chriqui, Rupert Friend, Andy Garcia, Heather Graham, Val Kilmer
Distributor: Anchor Bay
Release Date: July 21, 2011
Film Worth: $14.00
FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worthWhile it’s let down by its reliance on action genre clichés, this remains compelling and thought-provoking throughout.
What happened to Renny Harlin? Back in the nineties, the hugely confident Finn was an absolute golden boy of the action genre, being handed the plum assignment of Die Hard 2, and following that up with Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight. His reputation took a battering with the ridiculous Cutthroat Island (a silly pirate movie vanity piece for his then-wife, Geena Davis), and Harlin has lately been thrashing about to little fanfare in the B-grade action genre, last directing wrestling superstar John Cena in the grunt-and-thump extravaganza, Twelve Rounds.
With his latest film, however, Harlin attempts a return to more lofty, thoughtful territory. Ironically, his rusted-on action filmmaker instincts detract from the seriousness of 5 Days Of War... but certainly not enough to dive-bomb this compelling, highly ambitious film completely.
Following a lineage established by the likes of Under Fire, Salvador and The Killing Fields, 5 Days Of War tracks a war correspondent in the theatre of war; in this case, it's Rupert Friend's Thomas Anders and the brief but bloody confrontation that boiled between Georgia and the larger Russian states in 2008 as the rest of the world effectively looked away. It's a complex and much debated conflict, and Harlin undeniably takes the Georgian side, painting the burgeoning nation as an underdog hero, and its president (a solid Andy Garcia), as a Winston Churchill-style wartime leader.
This is all fine, as are a number of ingenious and artfully composed set pieces, but the script's genre-style leanings (it comes complete with last minute rescues, steely villains, a race against the clock, and lots of plausibility-stretching coincidences) and some of Harlin's casting choices (Emmanuelle Chriqui is typically awful as a tacked-on love interest) chip away at the overall quality of what remains an exciting, thought provoking, and occasionally moving film.
