Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2011

Pulpy war-cliché movie about the brief 2008 flare-up between Georgia and Russia that, according to this flick, the world ignored because it was so engrossed in the Beijing Olympics. Right. It starts out promising, with a stirring ambush scene in Iraq, but this is a Renny Harlin movie, and in the once-effective action director’s quest for clearly defined villains and heroes, he abandons objectivity and treats the complex conflict with insulting simplicity. There’s something deeply repugnant about turning real-life horrors into blow-stuff-up popcorn entertainment. Unforgivably tasteless coda.