[projekktor id=’28021′]
Aaron Taylor-Johnson and John Cena are two American soldiers pinned down by a sniper during the tail end of the Iraq War in Doug Liman’s slight, suspenseful thriller The Wall. Taylor-Johnson does the heavy lifting in this single-setting picture, the script for which appeared on the Blacklist in 2014. With a seasoned director behind the camera in Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow) and a strong lead in front, the film squeezes a lot of entertainment from a simple premise, even while struggling to fill that premise with much emotional weight.
The Iraq War is quickly surpassing Vietnam as the preferred setting for screenwriters to place their soldiers stories, and with good reason; it is the most immediately recognizable theatre of combat for the average viewer. But while the early films set in Iraq commented on the war itself, more recent offerings have simply turned it into another setting, free to use as long as you provide a line or two recognizing that an actual war was fought there at some point. Such is the case with The Wall, which sees a pair of U.S. Army snipers pinned down behind a wall by an unseen shooter in a remote area of the Iraqi desert…that could really be anywhere.
The hulking Cena plays Matthews, while Taylor-Johnson plays his partner Eyes (or Isaac). The pair form a sniper team, with Matthews as the trigger man and Eyes – appropriately enough – as the spotter. When we meet them they are perched on a hilltop overlooking a scene of carnage. A construction site on an oil pipeline has been attacked and a half dozen men are dead. What’s worse is that the attack seems to have come from a single, expert shooter. Upon further investigation, the sniper is not only still there, but it turns out he’s the fabled “Juba”, a legendary Iraqi sniper trained by the Americans. With a few quick shots Matthews is injured and Eyes is pinned down behind a crumbling brick wall. The invisible Juba – who we never see in the film – seems to anticipate their every move, and is skilled enough to put holes in radio antennas and water bottles, essentially condemning the pair to a slow death.
The premise is a good one, and it’s no surprise that Dwain Worrell’s script raised eyebrows with Hollywood executives. As a viewer it’s easy to put yourself in Eyes’ shoes and feel the utter hopelessness of the situation. Worrell (Walking the Dead) quickly throws us into the action and Eyes must use all of his training to figure out where his attacker is hiding before the hot sun and lack of water prove to much. For a film with just three characters it also uses dialogue surprisingly well. Employing the interesting device of the earpiece radios the partners use to communicate, we’re given tidbits about their pasts and their mission early in the film, only for that information to be exploited by Juba when we discover that he’s hacked into their signal. Much of the film’s latter half is a conversation between Eyes and Juba, with Eyes either attempting to distract or persuade the sniper who toys with the pinned down soldier like a cat with a bird.
While the radio conversation proves essential to the film’s climax, it’s also the weakest part of an otherwise lean and economic picture. The attempts to justify Juba’s actions as revenge against the country that invaded his homeland feel wholly unnecessary and come off as simple lip-service towards the conflict in which the film is set. Similarly Isaac is a far more interesting character when he’s just an average soldier caught in a bad spot. When the script attempts to shoehorn in a story of lingering guilt over his old partner’s death, it feels like a screenwriter worried his premise isn’t enough. This is exacerbated slightly by the fact that Taylor-Johnson tends to mumble, and is difficult to make out at times. While he gives a dedicated and authentic performance, it’s far better when he’s not talking too much and just scrambling to survive.
Despite this however The Wall had me on the edge of my seat throughout. Single setting films like this one are great in that it’s very easy to put yourself in the characters shoes and think along with them as they try to escape. And while Doug Liman has always employed a great use of 360 degree space in his action sequences – often placing his characters in the midst of chaos from all sides – it’s great fun to watch him craft a story where the protagonist is literally trapped in a 180 degree area. Though action junkies may find the story too slow, anyone looking for a tense thriller will find that while it’s not quite a bullseye, this sniper story certainly hits its mark.
Reviewed by Evan Arppe.
