While not necessarily a badly crafted movie, 5 Days of War`s thin veneer of objectivity is glossed over with slick Hollywood visuals, which come across as banal and insensitive considering the subject matter that it seeks to explore. More thriller than documentary, the film jettisons emotional profundity for exploding helicopters and long aerial shots of Russian tanks, an apt visual analogy for the emotional distance at which the film holds itself.
The action sequences, while relatively engaging in isolation, never come together to form a coherent whole. The result is a flat, disjointed narrative littered with celebrity cameos and exacerbated by lacklustre performances from the main leads. Rupert Friend as Thomas Anders the jaded journalist and Richard Goyle as his plucky cameraman put in listless performances that serve only to highlight the weakness of the cliche-ridden script.
5 Days of War is packaged to give viewers the ostensible Georgian perspective in the war, but instead focuses on lionising the journalists involved. While vaguely noble in that intent, the film is highly flawed in both execution and conception. To top it all off, the film`s conclusions features a montage of real-life interviewees affected by the war. Given the film`s kitsch polish, this final flourish strikes one as insensitive at best, distastefully exploitative at worst.
Summary: Die Hard: Geopolitics.
Rating: 2/5 Raphael Lim