I knew almost nothing about this movie going in… I figured it was going to be just another war in the Middle East flick. But when I realized that was Gerard Butler under that beard, I quickly re-oriented my thinking. This was going to be another one of his upjumped B movies, right? Wrong… it’s an overstuffed but serious action/drama.

Butler plays a CIA spook on a mission to destabilize Iran’s nuclear program when he’s burned. With his face known to all, he has to get out of the region before an array of spies and counter-spies catch up to him.

It’s a movie about an American and his local translator crossing the desert while being hunted by hostile forces. Guy Ritchie did this same premise a little better in The Covenant from a few months ago. They even share similar (welcome) themes about how America used and threw away their translators… though this film goes much harder on ideas of how destabilized and chaotic the region is.

The biggest problem with the flick though is its pacing and its length. It feels so much longer than its nearly two hour runtime. Partly that’s due to the inclusion of a number of Afghan and Iranian intelligence officers and spy hunters. I appreciate that they bothered to give a face to the other side… but sometimes these characters wind up underserved and drag out the runtime unnecessarily. I wouldn’t have them cut since they are unique to this movie… but the script needed to serve them better.

Kandahar is a better movie that I was predicting and it’s thoughtful and interesting enough that I was rooting for it. But its script and editing couldn’t get out of its way and we wound up with something that overstays its welcome. Still, the movie is pretty solid and enjoyable… you just have to have patience. And reprogram your expectations for a Gerard Butler flick a little.

Score: 79