Directors: Fabio Guaglione and Fabio Resinaro
Genre(s): Drama, Thriller, War
Runtime: 106 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
The film Mine from 2016 is a mediocre attempt at one of those psychological thrillers with a potentially unreliable narrator where the line between reality and fantasy becomes blurred. After an assassination assignment in modern-day North Africa goes wrong, two American servicemen – Michael Stevens (Armie Hammer) and Tommy Madison (Tom Cullen) find themselves passing through an old desert minefield. It may be a war movie, but this flick is more about confronting one’s inner demons than enemy soldiers on a battlefield.
Mine often lets abstract sequences get in the way of the more interesting survival thriller elements. I love surrealism, but I question its extensive use here. Sometimes it was difficult to care about what was going on, since it might just be a mirage or a hallucination. The flick becomes a bit tiring after a while, and the project might have fared better as a short film.
Now, let’s move on to the stuff that went right. Armie Hammer gives a solid performance with what he’s given to work with, and the cinematography’s pretty. The opening scenes involving the assassination attempt on a terrorist leader are appropriately tense. Despite all of the craziness throughout the picture, I will say that it mostly manages to stick the landing.
I used the word “abstract” earlier in this review, and I feel that that word sums up a significant portion of the feature, which might make it a bit unlikable or inaccessible to many people expecting something a bit more straightforward. It’s not your typical combat movie by a long shot, it has pretensions of being something more cerebral and personal. If you enjoy this film, then more power to you, but I found it to be an average (at best) what-is-real-and-what-is-not?-style thriller. Maybe I just didn’t “get” it…
My rating is 5 outta 10.
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