KABUL EXPRESS

Directed by Kabir Khan
Screenplay by Kabir Khan
Starring John Abraham, Arshad Warsi, Salman Shahid, Hanif Hum Ghum, Linda Arsenio

Reviewed by Matthew C. Brown
September 16 2006

Kabul Express is a buddy road movie comedy somethingorother and it involves a Taliban soldier, an Afghani driver, and a hot female American journalist. And other stuff. Though by no means entirely successful on its own terms, Kabul Express is nevertheless entertaining and watchable. Certainly the latter: how many times to you get to see this? Filmed on location in Afghanistan, diretor Kabir Khan makes maximum use of the spectacular landscapes our witless leads stumble through by jeep, tank, and on foot. For sheer visual pleasure, Kabul is aces.

Two Indian journalists are dropped into Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 to get footage of what's going on there. It's nice from a cultural perspective to see American soldiers being used with the same rank disdain as the nazis were used in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Afghanistan of Kabul Express is a country that has been buttfucked so many times they've lost track of who's supposed to be ... um ... wearing rubbers and who's not? Maybe the metaphor doesn't carry so cleanly, but then, neither does the war.

All of the inevitable pieces are in place; one of the buddies is a rogueish hero type, the other is comic relief. They pick up a driver and a love interest... and in the case of the latter, it's absolutely hilarious to hear American English written and performed by persons who clearly do not know any Americans or even watch American TV. They pick up a plot device in the person of a Talib who tries to gun-run them to the border, and is given much-needed dimension in the final act.

Though fun to watch and look at, Kabul Express is in dire need of a translateable sense of humour and wouldn't suffer by a bit of editing, either. I don't know if going for the big political sucker-punch at the end was a good idea, either. Still, it's not every day that I get to see a new look for an old trope. That's something.