A war, from the outside, looks impersonal and absurd. Impersonal because it is fought between two groups – its victories and defeats are collective. Absurd because it involves monumental loss – loss of life, resources, conscience. Stripped to its essence, a war is a shootout between two strangers, in which both parties lose. Yet it’s lived by people – and fought for a cause – so it becomes both personal and meaningful. A new Netflix actioner, Mosul, tackles a familiar material – the ISIS-fuelled carnage in Iraq – but elevates it with a sobering coda.
Based on a 2017 New Yorker piece, Mosul is centred on ISIS’s retreat from the eponymous Iraqi city and a SWAT team’s final mission – one whose purpose isn’t revealed until the last few scenes. That elite police unit, Nineveh, has been instrumental in ISIS’s defeat in Iraq. The movie opens to a young cop, Kawa (Adam Bessa), battling ISIS militants in a tense shootout, which claims his uncle. He and his colleague are eventually rescued by the Nineveh officers. Major Jasem (Suhail Dabbach), heading the SWAT team, invites Kawa to join his troop. This war has suddenly become personal for Kawa, and he finds in Nineveh a purpose and an ally: exacting revenge.
Twenty-one-year-old Kawa is a smart narrative choice to propel the movie, for he, like the audience, is new to this world. He doesn’t know his team members; he has no idea about the big picture. Many events, as a result, seem random and chaotic, underlined by mind-numbing violence: bullets rain, bodies drop, grenades fly. And at the centre of it all is the constant question: What is the plan? Kawa doesn’t get an answer; neither do we.
As the Nineveh team moves from one house to the other, the story gathers steam. Distrust runs high in a place like Mosul; the veteran members don’t know Kawa: can they trust him? That uneasiness heightens when Kawa’s colleague, who was rescued by Nineveh, turns out to be a renegade. Mosul tells the story of a rescue team over the course of one afternoon. This day-in-the-life approach illuminates the combatants’ challenges – not getting killed tops their list – and captures the humanity wriggling in a dreadful land.
The Nineveh members, for instance, live their lives between shootouts. Taking a break for a few minutes whenever possible, they watch soap operas, listen to music, share cigarettes. These brief moments highlight the difference between their present and past: what they’re forced to become and what they were. More importantly, what they never would be. It’s a succinct comment on the nature of war: how, in one stroke, it erases all possibilities of time and identity.
And then, there are deaths. As the mission intensifies, the Nineveh team starts losing its members, one by one. Old and new friendships are destroyed in a few seconds, as if they never existed. Resources deplete, too, with disturbing urgency. Nineveh keeps losing its Humvees; bullets and weapons are in short supply. The mission starts resembling a leaking boat rowing furiously. Even when the squad finds an ally, in an Iranian Special Forces Colonel, solidarity is reduced to a compromise. They barter hookah for a rocket-propelled grenade, cartons of cigarettes for rifle cartridges. That exchange, however, is underpinned by an altercation, featuring nationalist pride, implying that even after ISIS’s exit, the country would continue to battle newer challenges.
Even though Mosul is a Hollywood production — directed by Matthew Michael Carnahan and produced by the Russo brothers — it steers away from the American saviour complex. The Nineveh SWAT team sees the American forces for what they’re: a destructive machine acting out of self-interest. Comprising Arab actors speaking Arabic, Mosul respects the place and its people, placing their self-determination at the centre of the story. A crucial detail that makes it credible and humane.
Mosul saves its most potent plot turn for the last – a choice that both benefits and harms the film. At the start, it builds intrigue; the audiences, along with Kawa, are looking for patterns and clues. But after a point, amid routines of attack and counterattack, the film starts to suffer from narrative stagnancy. But that doesn’t continue for long, as Mosul races to its finest segment: the poignant revelation.
Given the material and the genre, the film could have easily ended on an explosive note: disturbing bloodshed, adrenaline-pumping action, an eventual triumph. That is the formula; that is the dominant worldview. But the movie rejects that route, opting for a softer, introspective denouement. The most important victory, in the world of Mosul, has nothing to do with the enemy; it isn’t about destruction or transient present. It is about kinship and chains of solidarity; it is about building a future. In the bullet-ridden winds of ravaged Iraq, Mosul keeps the flickering flame of humanity alive.
