Afghan Luke

Good story at the start but more boring at the end I had dream a bigger scene for Colin Cunningham he is so great he can do a better character there

This is a wonderful little movie. Directed and produced by the same guys as the Trailer Park Boys this is a completely different type of movie. Great work with the muted colours and the dust and dirt of Afghanistan. I don't know how they were able to make BC look like Afghanistan but it is believable and convincing in the movie. It is a little predictable and contrived in parts but the characters are believable and I was hooked in from the very beginning of the movie. The ending however was strong and didn't cave to be a predictable Hollywood want-a-be ending. This movie was easy to watch, easy to understand but still had enough subsistence to allow for great conversations afterwards.

(2011) Afghan Luke DRAMA

Canadian freelance reporter/ journalist, Luke Benning (Nick Stahl) thinks he has witnessed from a distance a well renown Canadian sniper cutting a finger from each of his kills while fighting in Afghanistan. And upon going back to Canada, he tries to get it published, but with no avail he ends up getting fired for wanting to pursue it. So he decides to go back to Afghanistan to that exact same location where it all happened so that he can physically check on the bodies himself. From looking at the big picture, to make it a goal to convict a single person of war crimes, for something as trivial as checking up on people who're already dead and buried, you would've think that would have to be the least of his problems. I still have know idea why that is so important when they're worst things that happened in the war of Afghanistan, such as unreported sexual assaults of women in the military (The Invisible War), freelance shootings by covert operations and then cover up (Dirty Wars), and torture tactics at Guantanamo Bay, road side bombs, Taliban extremists targeting foreigners and Taliban extremists using children as martyrs, and I can go on forever. The other confusing aspect of this movie is the fact that viewers don't have any sense what this movie is about, is it about the reunification of Afghanistan people, the fact that they sell pot to make a living when their is nothing else, or to produce proper sanitation even though Taliban extremists also target foreign aid workers. This movie narrow mindedly addresses a small little problem out of something bigger. And as a result of them doing that, it kind of portray Luke Benning as an annoying douche.

Let's welcome back the director of "Trailer Park Boys" Mike Clattenberg for what I believe is his second full length feature film and quiet a good one at that.

"Afghan Luke" stars a bunch of incredibly talented young actors/actresses my personal favorite of course Nick Stahl along with Stephen Lobo and Nicholas Wright. It's a drama that follows Luke Benning(Stahl) and the story he is attempting to write and prove about Canadian solider mutilating corpses in Afghanistan during the war. After initially being rejected Luke quits his paper to return to Afghanistan with his best friend Thom played by N.Wright where they attempt to gain proof of the story by heading across the country in search of the evidence.

Well what can I say, I suppose I will start with the cinematography the film is shot beautifully I believe in parts of British Columbia but had such great authenticity and really made you feel part of the journey. The dialog was very cleverly written along with some great comedic timing, everyone owns there roles, I was surprised to find all the cast were either American's or Canadians and with a multitude of dialects and accents throughout the film it was performed successfully, Nick stole the show leading us down the road the film ultimately takes.

On a limited budget a solid project raising questions and answers on war was carried out very well. Only thing missing was a good musical score which could have accompanied the film, and it was a little slow in it's build up. Warning alert to those easily offended there is a bit of drug use and plenty of heavy language throughout the film, but most is in context with the storytelling. If you are looking for a unique take on a journalistic point of view of the war this is much better then recent films "The Bang Bang Club" and "5 Days Of War" if your a fan of Nick like I am, it's one worth a viewing.

I know this is fiction, but if you're going to have a movie embedded within an historical context, at least attempt to make that context somewhat accurate, or at least believable to anyone with even a limited knowledge of the event/events. I had to turn this off after 15 minutes there were so many inaccuracies.

The two things that did seem accurate.

1. It looked like it could be Afghanistan.

2. His guide was getting high.

Not accurate;

1. Snipers are not in four-man teams firing from moving vehicles. 2. There are no tent-bars in Afghanistan, much less those with dancing white women. Alcohol is against the law, and while I am sure that alcohol is smuggled in, it's abuse is not flaunted because it is illegal. 3. What newspaper has ever suppressed a story that denigrates soldiers?

Answer... none. The typical tact is to exaggerate every infraction and try to instigate it into some Muslim outrage and retaliation.