Signature Entertainment
Recounting the Battle of Long Tan fought by Australian soldiers in Vietnam in 1996, director Kriv Stenders’ Danger Close is a formulaic yet involving war film that details the harrowing events endured by 108 soldiers as they faced an army of 2,000.
Stenders helms a screenplay penned by Stuart Beattie, James Nichols, Karel Segers, Paul Sullivan, and Jack Brislee; it’s a mostly effective script, executed with a solid sense of propulsion narratively. However, the abundance of writers is indicative of the lack of individuality of the film, which often falls into cliche feels too generic to be a distinctive piece of work. That being said, there’s a lot it gets right too; it may be formulaic, but it’s a formula executed well and Stenders juggles the myriad of elements at play effectively. We cut between a slew of characters and locations and, whilst some of it is unnecessary, the film does a good job of realising its environment and those inhabiting it. The story follows a group of young and inexperienced Australian and New Zealand soldiers, most going to battle for the first time, outnumbered and fighting for their lives against 18 times as many North Vietnamese soldiers.
It’s a troubling situation for the group of men caught in the mix. Our ensemble is made up of a variety of war personas. Major Smith (Travis Fimmel), a hard-cut war veteran sick of babysitting the novice soldiers, commands the crew. He’s joined by insolent newbie Paul Large (Daniel Webber) – an early scene sees Smith and Large at odds for their different approaches to warfare, with Smith threatening to send the latter home in a box – and the more respected Sergeant Buick (Luke Bracey) as the main eyes into this story. It’s the battlefield dynamic between these soldiers that when the film is at its best, offering the emotional backbone of the film; particularly the relationship between Smith and Large which, whilst being a predictable one, brings a great deal of weight to the proceedings as they take to like one another and we see Smith go from one-man show to team player to navigate his petrified crew through the tense situation at hand. A conversational scene between the pair towards the end of the film is a particularly resonant highlight.
Fimmel, Webber, and Bracey lead the cast with three well-rounded performances. Their arcs are, at times, stereotypical but they bring such gravitas and humanity to their respective roles. Webber, especially, inexperienced with warfare, acts as the audience’s compass into the battle. There are a lot of characters throughout; we don’t spend lots of time with the majority, with most being thinly-sketched. but the general sense of brotherhood and camaraderie can still be felt. The Vietnamese soldiers, however, are poorly portrayed – the one-dimensional antagonistic presence of the film. Most war movies suffer by letting their patriotic duty get in the way of good storytelling so the films usually end up offensively portraying ‘the opposing side’ as faceless bandits. Danger Close is more of the same. Very little time is spent delving into the purpose behind the battle or really fleshing it out; we’re thrown into the crossfires very quickly and forced to just accept the situation as it is but it removes a lot of the investment from the whole thing.
Stenders helms the film competently enough; the action sequences are epic and have a grit to it that makes them enthralling and Ben Nott’s cinematography is gorgeous – at times reminiscent of Apocalypse Now and Hacksaw Ridge, capturing the intensity and brutality with great texture. Although the script can be a little clunky and mawkish in parts, it’s involving enough to make Danger Close an engaging and entertaining war film anchored by a strong cast and crew – albeit one that offers a very surface-level perspective on an otherwise harrowing battle.
Danger Close is available on DVD and Digital HD from 6th April.
