Gerard Butler has carved out a successful career for himself making mildly entertaining but trashy action films. His formula is that he produces them under the name G-Base and shoots them in low-budget countries in Eastern Europe. With his latest film, KANDAHAR, Saudi Arabia fills in for Afghanistan. Regardless of the location, it’s still mildly, okay, it’s barely entertaining but still trashy.

Tom Harris (Butler, PLANE; GREENLAND) is an undercover CIA operative. After sabotaging a secret nuclear research facility in Iran, his next assignment sends him to Herat, Afghanistan to set up a base of operations on the Afghan side of the Iranian border, which the CIA intends to use to monitor and attack Iran again in the future. However, no sooner are Tom’s boots on the ground then a British journalist reveals that it was CIA who was behind the attack on the nuclear facility. With his cover now blown, Tom has 30 hours to travel the 400 kilometers to Kandahar where a British military transport will whisk him to safety. With him is his interpreter, Mohammed “Mo” Doud (Navid Negahban, AMERICAN SNIPER; TV’s HOMELAND), an Afghani who fled his country when the Americans pulled out and now lives with his family in Baltimore. Together, the pair travel across the vast wilderness being chased by an Iranian agent, the Taliban, various regional warlords and a Pakistani ISI agent named Kahil Nasir (Ali Fazal, DEATH ON THE NILE; VICTORIA & ABDUL), all of whom wouldn’t think twice about ransoming Tom off to the Iranians.

No one expects quality when it comes to a Gerard Butler film and you’re not going to find it here either. It would be nice, however, to get a story that isn’t so one-note but director Ric Roman Waugh (GREENLAND; ANGEL HAS FALLEN) doesn’t seem interested in giving audiences that luxury. Instead, KANDAHAR is just two hours of set piece-bridge-repeat with no character development but a fair amount of historical reinterpretation in case you’re into that. He and writer Mitchell LaFortune also give us a whole lot of plot holes. I’ll just say gasoline, cell phone service and cell phone batteries. I would have also included drone strike in that list but that one was finally addressed at the film’s climax. Sadly, the acting talents of Navid Negahban are completely wasted here, as are those of Ali Fazal, although he gets to show off his amazing hair on multiple occasions.

You may be asking yourself, “Hey, wasn’t there another film recently about a guy trying to get his Afghan translator out of the country?” Yes, there was. It was GUY RITCHIE’S THE COVENANT, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, and it was far more interesting, far more exciting and far less preachy than KANDAHAR is… and it wasn’t that great a movie either.

Unlike Butler’s other films, it’s unlikely that KANDAHAR will add much to his bank account, if at all. The film is estimated to have cost US$70 million but it has only taken in about $9 million dollars at the worldwide box office so far. He might have to take a tax loss on this one. Sad.

KANDAHAR opens in Hong Kong tomorrow (September 7^th). It already opened in most other major markets so we’re quite late to the party. In any case, if you haven’t seen it yet, KANDAHAR is the second best film you’ll see this year about a white guy saving his Afghan interpreter.

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