Movie Review - Mosul (2020)

From November 2016 to July 2017, the Iraqi government with allied forces fought against ISIS in what's referred to as the Battle of Mosul. ISIS had taken control of Mosul, which is Iraq's second largest city. The allied forces beat back ISIS and regained the city. There have been plenty of documentaries, depicting that battle, which is considered one of the world's single largest military operations. There were at least three short-form documentaries. One of which was on PBS. A feature-length documentary came out in 2019. However, in January 2017, Luke Mogelson published an article called "The Desperate Battle to Destroy ISIS" in The New Yorker magazine, which details the exploits of an elite police unit that helped win the conflict. This film, written and directed by Matthew Michael Carnahan in his directorial debut, adapts that article.

When it comes to Middle Eastern dramas or action flicks that take place in that part of the world, Carnahan is no stranger. His first, two screenplays that were produced into films, include The Kingdom (2007) and Lions for Lambs (2007). Both the films were directed by more famous men behind the camera and featured A-list casts. Here, Carnahan really strips things down, to make it feel less like a Hollywood production and more like some of those aforementioned documentaries. What also works in this film's favor is that unlike other films about the Iraq War like The Hurt Locker (2009) or American Sniper (2014), this film doesn't center itself around American soldiers or any white soldiers. It's not to say that films centering on American or white soldiers shouldn't be made. It's just that often films about the Middle East won't center themselves on Middle Eastern people or feature Arab or Muslim people in significant or even prominent ways. Carnahan's film certainly rectifies that.

Adam Bessa (Extraction) stars as Kawa Salah al-Faily, a 21-year-old member of the Iraqi federal police. He works in Mosul and is assigned to help fight crime, but the opening of this film has him caught in a gunfight with ISIS fighters. The circumstances aren't exactly flushed out, but he and his partner are pinned down in some kind of shop and Kawa is crouched down over the dead body of his uncle who somehow got involved with whatever crime or just happened to get caught in the crossfire.

Suhail Dabbach (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and The Hurt Locker) co-stars as Jasem, the leader of a SWAT team that has become rather legendary in the Nineveh province. Jasem's SWAT team has been known as a fierce and effective group that has taken out a lot of ISIS terrorists. Jasem's team is probably the only group that ISIS hates more than the Americans or so-called infidels. Jasem now has the rank of Major, but he used to be a homicide detective that most likely worked for the federal police. He keeps talking about rebuilding Mosul and getting things back to the way they used to be, presumably before the war, which would most likely be a distant memory for many Iraqis.

His team probably started small, but it expanded after he started recruiting other soldiers or police. He has a rule where the people he recruits are people who have lost loved ones or family members to ISIS. Given that ISIS just killed Kawa's uncle, Jasem wants to recruit Kawa. However, there are supreme trust issues. Kawa doesn't trust Jasem because he and his team are essentially a rogue operation, acting outside the bounds of the law. For example, Jasem doesn't take ISIS prisoners. He executes them, even if they're captured and unarmed. Jasem, however, doesn't trust Kawa because so many so-called police members have been compromised or blackmailed into betrayal. The question remains of Kawa's loyalty and even fidelity to the mission that Jasem has.

There is this mystery of the film where Jasem and his team admit that they are on a mission of their own making, but no one will say what exactly that mission is. Kawa keeps asking what the mission is and no one will tell him. He gets frustrated and upset by it, but he continues with them when he could walk away from them. Discovering what that mission is becomes the mystery of this film. Carnahan lays down clues and hints that a person could pick up and thus deduce what Jasem's team is ultimately doing. However, leaving that mystery as a surprise for the very end is more problematic than Carnahan probably intended.

Carnahan probably intended it to be a narrative hook that keeps the audience intrigued as to where Jasem's team is going and what they ultimately want to do. However, the reason it's problematic is two-fold. For starters, it calls into question Kawa's motivation. Yes, Jasem and his team rescued him, but they never make it seem like Kawa is indebted to them and they openly don't trust him, so it's odd that he would stick with them. He doesn't know what their mission is, but it seems in general they're trying to accomplish what all the allied forces are trying to accomplish, which is stop ISIS, but Kawa doesn't need to stay with Jasem to accomplish that because again that's what all the allies are doing. We don't get anything else about Kawa that would help us with his motivations here. Is he an adrenaline junkie? Is he secretly enamored with the legend of Jasem's team and has a fantasy of being one of them? We don't know.

Finally, there's another reason why not knowing Jasem's mission until the end is problematic. That reason is that it makes the film boring from a frustrating standpoint. Jasem and the team along with Kawa go from one gunfight to another and we don't know why. Without knowing the end-goal, we don't know what the stakes are, so the action is just repetitive without feeling any progression is happening. It gets to a point where one thinks that as they move further and further along, more and more of them would get killed off until it becomes like a Moby Dick situation where maybe they were chasing a white whale or something. That's not the case, but keeping Jasem's mission a mystery doesn't allow the audience to connect emotionally to what the characters are doing or why. Therefore, when that ending comes, it's difficult to make that cathartic jump or empathetic connection.

I compare this film to something like The Old Guard (2020), which has a similar premise. It's about a group of people who are like this rogue military unit that recruits a new member who is like them. However, that film doesn't hide its goals and intentions or what the characters are doing. It's not a lot, but The Old Guard gives more of the back story of the characters, allowing us to connect with them more. Carnahan's film doesn't do that.

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 42 mins.

Available on Netflix.