The Passage was one of the most anticipated films of 2019, the film had so much hype especially because its Egypt's first war film in decades.
The film is not as great as it was anticipated, but it's not bad either.
The acting in the film was good but sometimes it felt a little bit over that it became cliched.
The action packed scenes were executed well, however they weren't the action scenes that you would see in a war film. The film is talking about a mission that was done by a group from the Egyptian Commandos so the film didn't require so much action packed scenes, like a Michael Bay film.
I won't talk about the music because Omar Khairat which means it was obviously great.
Let's talk about the story, which had so many flaws. There are two sides in a war, the patriotic side and the coward side who was just forced, there wasn't a single character that portrayed the bad side. There's nothing wrong with admitting that the bad side exists, what is really wrong is showing that it doesn't. I read the story of the "Group 39 Fighting" that the film is based on, and the film's main purpose wasn't to show their story but it was to show how much explosions they could make using their story. Also there is always something that bothered me about war films, the target is always "The biggest weapons supply the enemy has", "The biggest war camp in enemy army", etc and the film didn't avoid that cliche at all. Small victories matter too, like the victories this group had accomplished.
I am a little let down because I hoped that this film would change this typical stereo typing about the Military, especially with foreign films not afraid of admitting that, "Dunkirk" is a film about the biggest retreat in the war and they showed it like a victory without any shame because it led to a victory but I still would say that I enjoyed the film.
I would obviously recommend this film, so others could join the debate and also because they would enjoy the film.