Ghost Soldier review: Jim Caviezel's action thriller fires blanks

There is a difference between a film that knows how to present a good old-fashioned action spectacle and one that mistakes an assortment of expensive-looking weapons for a story. William Eubank’s Ghost Soldier unfortunately falls into the latter category. Starring Jim Caviezel as a former Special Forces soldier who takes on a powerful corporation threatening his community, the film has all the ingredients of a conventional one-man-army thriller. What it lacks is any real excitement, imagination or emotional investment.Caviezel plays Henry ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald, a former Green Beret who has settled into a quiet life in Wyoming. He is also an advanced weapons developer, a detail that becomes increasingly important as a corporation begins forcing residents to give up their land for a project linked to AI data centres. When the company turns to intimidation and violence, Fitz decides to fight back. His military background, technical expertise and almost superhuman combat abilities make him a formidable opponent. The odds, naturally, are stacked against him. The outcome, however, is never really in doubt.The premise has some contemporary relevance. Corporate control over land, the environmental cost of data centres and the displacement of local communities could have made for an interesting action thriller. But Ghost Soldier has little interest in exploring these ideas beyond using them to establish a convenient set of villains. The corporation is cartoonishly evil, its representatives are interchangeable threats, and the people whose homes are at stake rarely get enough character development to make their predicament matter. A potentially interesting conflict is reduced to a simplistic exercise in good versus evil. The film’s fascination with military technology is even more pronounced. Fitz has access to an impressive collection of experimental weaponry, from homing bullets to camouflage systems that make their users virtually invisible. There are gadgets designed to make ordinary combat look almost quaint. Yet the novelty wears off quickly. The film seems so enamoured with demonstrating what these weapons can do that it forgets to give us a reason to care about who is using them or why. At times, Ghost Soldier feels less like a movie and more like an extended promotional showcase for futuristic defence technology and ammunition. That would perhaps be forgivable if the action delivered. It doesn’t consistently do so. The fight sequences rely heavily on rapid cuts and close-ups, often making the choreography difficult to follow. The weapons may be futuristic, but the action surrounding them lacks invention. Even the film’s more elaborate set pieces struggle to create genuine tension because Fitz is so overwhelmingly equipped that the threat never feels particularly credible.Caviezel plays Fitz with a permanently stern expression and a restrained intensity that occasionally borders on blankness. The character is written as a man of few words, guided by faith, patriotism and an unwavering moral code. Unfortunately, there is little beneath that carefully constructed exterior. His relationship with a young boy from the neighbourhood is meant to reveal a softer side, but the emotional beats feel manufactured. The film repeatedly tells us what kind of man Fitz is without doing enough to make us understand him. The supporting cast fares no better. Garret Dillahunt and Beau Knapp bring some menace to their respective antagonistic roles, while Olivia Thirlby, as the local sheriff, is given frustratingly little to do. Shea Whigham makes an appearance as Fitz’s government contact, but even his presence cannot add much texture to a screenplay that seems determined to keep everything moving towards the next confrontation.The climax doesn’t help either. The build-up promises a confrontation worthy of the film’s elaborate technological set-up, only for the payoff to feel oddly perfunctory. It is difficult to recall a recent action thriller that does so little with so much apparent firepower. The ending doesn’t just disappoint; it exposes how little dramatic momentum the film has managed to build.At 90 minutes, Ghost Soldier is hardly a long film, yet it feels considerably longer. The story never gathers enough weight to elevate its familiar premise, the characters remain thinly drawn, and the action rarely compensates for the narrative’s shortcomings. There is a perfectly serviceable B-movie somewhere in this material. What arrives instead is an uninspired thriller that confuses technological novelty with cinematic excitement. For all its ammunition, Ghost Soldier has very little to fire.- Ends