I suppose every army has that mythical sniper – a long-range killer with the eyes of an eagle, the patience of Job, and the bladder of an African bull elephant. If facing this legend, you’ve got a chance at hand-to-hand combat, but if your mission is to take this particular piece off the chessboard and you’re not exactly one square over, well … good luck, buddy. Hope your affairs are in order.
American soldiers Matthews (John Cena) and Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) have been surveying a murder scene in the Iraq desert for twenty hours. Twenty hours seems a prudent amount of time to wait out danger, but this is war. Better safe than sorry, and the details are ominous – half a dozen or so bodies of Americans strewn about an oil pipeline under construction. Each man has been shot in the head, likely from a distance. It’s 2007 and the war is over … for most, which makes this scene all the more quixotic. Some Iraqi out there is trying, slowly, to even the score, and he’s pretty good at it.
After twenty hours, however, the enemy should have moved, right? So Matthews bites the bullet, rises from his camouflaged rocky mezzanine above, and carefully marches down to the stage where he … bites the bullet. Now I know this is fiction, but the next part is always the part that gets to me. Sergeant Isaac, upon seeing his comrade fall and without knowing how, races to put himself in exactly the same danger. This is what soldiers do and this why we respect the Hell out them for doing it. The scene ends with Isaac shot in the leg and hiding from danger behind The Wall, an uneven four-to-five-foot-tall brick remainder of what once was a schoolhouse.
In a way, The Wall makes a great horror set-up – geographic isolation, lethal threat, limited supplies, limited communication, and limited time until Isaac’s leg wound becomes line two of his autopsy. Oh, and get this; it looks like the shooter wants to talk – well otherwise, it was just gonna be Aaron trying to Kick-Ass by himself, so probably not a bad thing.
The Wall relies a great deal on the cat-and-mouse game between Isaac and the shooter (Laith Nakli). This minimalist chess game is the heart of the movie. It’s a
wonderful set-up and what thrillers are all about. I would have been overjoyed to deliver my own four-star war-report. Unfortunately, there are major drawbacks to this minor fictional conflict – one is that the players are not evenly matched. Not by a longshot, so-to-speak. The other is the dialogue isn’t terribly sharp. Mostly, it involves Aaron Taylor-Johnson swearing a lot. This is reasonable, of course, given his situation; it is almost certainly what I’d do were I in his boots, but seeing as how this is a fictional account, I was hoping that Sergeant Isaac had been just a tad more resourceful … dude, how do you escape this alive? How do you take down your enemy? I know you’re used to being rescued by Hit Girl, but she ain’t here; time to think on your own.
I wanted to love this film. I didn’t. Still, it plays better than most. Even in overwritten drama, finding legitimate thrill and protagonist can be difficult. I rack my brains to think how this could have been better; before finding answers, however, I ran to the theater next door where a new war was starting.
♪Haji Fallujah rolled through a clip
And downed the ‘Mer’cans stationed
Matthews arose from a painful repose
And started the investigation
This is worse than ‘Nam
This is worse than ‘Nam
Alaikum assalam!
Wish I had a bomb
Matthews looked round and fell to the ground
With a bullet in mid-section
Haji sat still thinking that he will
Erase all folks in connection
Well I’m on my way
Got to save that GI
I’m on my way and wastin’ no time
But I shouldn’t go there
Good-bye femoral, near the patella
Targets: me and Cena
Downed by the school house♫
Rated R, 81 Minutes
D: Doug Liman
W: Dwain Worrell
Genre: Crouching mouse, hidden cat
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Combat vets, I imagine
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Combat vets, I imagine
♪ Parody inspired by “Me and Julio Down by the School Yard”
