12 Strong | Rotten Tomatoes (2025)

Audience Reviews

Ted B Hard to watch because of the poor acting, predictable storyline, bad writing, and over-the-top battle scenes. Not worth two hours. Rated 1.5/5 Stars • Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 09/24/24 Full Review Nik S I just watched the comic Rated 1.5/5 Stars • Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 05/26/24 Full Review Adam T The only reason to watch this is that there is a true story the film is attempting to depict. But it's so cliched and unrealistic I hardly got excited. Except for the horseback charges - its always exciting to watch people on fast galloping horses, despite the stupidity of them all being bullet-proof under close automatic weapon fire, the most obvious silliness of the film. Thisis one of those movies with inane shoot-em-up scenes where six of our heroes run into open scenes under fire from hundreds of bad guys shooting, and bizarrely, the bad guys all die and the heroes never get hit. After ducking for cover, any one of our heroes is able to step out from behind cover and stand up and bang bang bang kill a whole lot of baddieswho are firing at him. But we're so familiar with bullet-proof American gunslingergood-guyfrom1950s Westerns, so you kind-of can ignore this as dramatic licence.But then our guys call in B52s to drop bombs from 32,000 feet that fall directly on the Afghan enemy, and watching from nearby (!), a few minutes later our guys walk in vicctoriously to peruse all the dead bad guys. In reality, the real ODA 595 special forces group "in one 18-hour battle, ... destroyed over 20 armored and 20 support vehicles". "They guided hundreds of GPS-guided 2,000-pound JDAM precision-guided munitions dropped by... heavy bombers onto Taliban and Al-Qaeda positions near Mazar-i-Sharif". Never did the film convey the gritty dramatic reality of what actually happened.The film's premise is that the evil Taliban need to be defeated so that Al Qaeda can't commit even worse acts than 9/11. This just wasn't true. Rated 1/5 Stars • Rated 1 out of 5 stars 05/24/24 Full Review Holly G Fine movie. Could have been more engaging but I like that it’s a true story and I enjoyed the strategy. Rated 3/5 Stars • Rated 3 out of 5 stars 04/29/24 Full Review Dachtor S This movie is outstanding! It doesn't drag and needs no "nuance". Rated 5/5 Stars • Rated 5 out of 5 stars 12/25/23 Full Review Brian D Outstanding movie telling a story of the heroism of American Special Forces against overwhelming odds, trying to unite a rag-tag collection of battling tribes and warlords to form a "Northern Alliance" to combat the Taliban and take out AQ terrorists in the Afghan mountains in the days immediately following 9/11. It portrayed the commitment, dedication and sacrifice of those soldiers and the incredible odds a handful of men accepted to strike back at those that slaughtered so many Americans. The relationship between the American and Afghan leader was powerful and moving, as was the suffering of Afghan civilians under Taliban rule.What was perhaps underplayed was the hopeless situation for our people due to Afghani culture. The fractured, tribal nature and divisiveness of that culture was touched on but understated. One of the most powerful lines was when the Afghan leader pledged to fight his rival tribal leader rather than the Taliban and the American leader told him "If you do that, you're no general, your just a warlord". That "tribalism" is what enabled the Taliban in the first place.Also underplayed was the primitiveness and brutality of Taliban rule. It was touched on briefly when their leader executed a woman for the crime of educating her children (or perhaps she was a teacher and not the mother-wasn't clear in the film). But this was just one of so many cases of the barbarism that took place under the brutality of Islamic fundamentalists. What was never touched on (and couldn't be since it was after the timeline of the movie) was the tremendous sacrifice of American lives and tax dollars to fight the Taliban and give the Afghan people an opportunity to advance into the 21st century....only to have them fail and again empower the Taliban to lead their nation. Such a sad situation. Rated 4.5/5 Stars • Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 09/26/23 Full Review Read all reviews

12 Strong

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