- Wed Jun 24, 2015 12:12 am
#8940
Watched a low budget British production called Kajaki that was released on dvd last week. It is a true story based upon a small British unit in a FOB in Kajaki in Afghanistan. A small team was sent forward from the FOB to carry out a sniper mission against a Taliban roadblock and stumbled into a minefield laid by the Soviets during their occupation.
The film / actual events become / became a terrible rescue mission in very difficult circumstances, within which you see how ordinary people can excel in all sorts of ways in extra-ordinary and hideously difficult circumstances.
The film is a very hard watch and pulls no punches in what it has to deal with, but it does it well. It is gritty, emotional and well constructed visually. These people really did their homework on the kit used, the location, but most importantly the squaddie mind set, language and gallows humour. This is largely due to the fact that a good number of key characters involved in the real scenario had active advisory roles on this film.
It does not have the Hollywood gloss that the likes of American Sniper or Hurt Locker have in scope, but this was a small operation that went really wrong in a similar theatre of conflict and is expertly dealt with in this production. I remember when the story of this incident broke on our national TV news at the time, the real event had impact then and this film does justice to it now.
- By johnwales