One of the few inroads that right-wing media made into mainstream moviedom during the Trump era was 2023’s “Sound of Freedom,” the Angel Studios-funded action thriller starring former-Jesus-turned-QAnon-soldier Jim Caviezel as a righteous man gruffly taking down human traffickers. It made a boatload of money at the box office, but that seemed to be a fluke; people seem to vastly prefer the ordinary, everyday appeal of the mid-budget Hollywood bust-em-ups that Liam Neeson and Jason Statham seem to trot out every six months or so to the outright propagandizing of something like “Freedom.” Three years later, Caviezel is back with another proselytizing punch-em-up, one that sometimes hits the right political targets but, like his character’s futuristic bullets, attacks them from the craziest of angles.
“Ghost Soldier,” which sounds like the title of a cheap Tom Clancy airport thriller I’m shocked this doesn’t adapt, begins with a quote from Mark Twain: “There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.” You see, where “Freedom” tackled trafficking, screenwriter Chris Papasedero sits Caviezel in the middle of a land grab courtesy of a greedy AI-happy investment firm called Brownstone (gee, I wonder where they got that name), whose mustache-twirling execs (including Alexej Manvelov and Steven Cree) covet the water-rich property of hardworking settlers in Wyoming. One such family is the Hernandezes, a humble Mexican clan who worship their dead veteran patriarch so much that, when Brownstone goons (led by a deeply overqualified Garret Dillahunt) set their house on fire for refusing to sell their land, the family’s 12-year-old son Jack runs in to grab the folded American flag that represents him.
Unlucky for them, the Hernandezes’ close neighbor, and fellow holdout, Fitz (Caviezel), is no mere loner: Turns out he’s a stone-faced, God-fearing former Green Beret, who has turned his genius military mind toward developing prototype weapons for DARPA in his remote lab out in the boondocks. He’s taken a shine to the Hernandezes, especially Jack, whom he takes under his wing (and even gifts him a .22-caliber rifle for his birthday, courtesy of deeply responsible gun shop owner Michael Ironside). He’s the kind of emotionless warrior-poet Pete Hegseth would adore: A sociopathic killing machine who intertwines his faith with his skill for (and evident love of) violence. Fitz’s dialogue consists entirely of pat Christian-soldier lines that wouldn’t be out of place on your MAGA cousin’s Facebook page: “Corporate tyranny is still tyranny,” “God will judge our enemies; I’ll just arrange a meeting,” “My blood is still red. I’m a patriot.” Hell, Fitz even gets stabbed in the exact spot Christ was speared on the cross before being left for dead.
Caviezel plays Fitz with all the sleepy stoicism of a man who still thinks crying is for girls and that girls should probably stay out of the fight altogether. (Granted, he has an erstwhile sidekick in local sheriff Olivia Thirlby, but she gets so little to do here, and is so disconnected from the action, one can imagine she pined for the simple pleasures of her role in “Dredd.”) No one, Fitz included, gets any kind of dimension to them, though the fact that there are so many characters in this 85-minute film that no one gets more than a scene or two to stand out doesn’t help.
Naturally, Fitz’s intervention in Brownstone’s nakedly violent strongarm tactics takes him up a notch in threat level, so the company retaliates by sending another swarm of baddies in tacticool armor to take him down, this time led by the big-bicepped Beau Knapp, who chews through his hacky dialogue and clunky Serbian accent with such flair that it’s clear he’s the only one on the film’s true frequency. Director William Eubank (“Underwater”) tries to inject the affair with a little style, and there’s a perverse glee in all the high-tech gadgets Fitz has to show off. There are invisibility cloaks, homing bullets, and even double-sided bombs that fly toward each other if you push the right button, burning everything (and everyone) in their way.
Alas, despite a couple of novel moments (including one single neat image of Fitz running around a lamppost to avoid a minigun-equipped van circling around him), Eubanks’ action is chopped to hell with quick cuts and frenzied, close-up movements. Even the gadgets themselves feel like vestiges of a different script with a bigger scope; it doesn’t make sense for Fitz to be trotting out all these gizmos against what could healthily be described as a half-dozen mercs with machine guns. What’s more, this film is rated PG-13, so any cathartic bloodletting is hastily cut away from.
But all of this action is also, sadly, in service of a violent right-wing revenge fantasy that tips its political hand far too clumsily and too often. Don’t get me wrong; it’s hardly a revelation for films to have conservative leanings, and many of us learn to love them anyway. “Ghost Soldier,” on the other hand, has nothing to offer but its unsubtle politics, masking reactionary tendencies behind ostensibly reasonable foes like A.I. tech bros and land-grabbing governments bought and paid for by corporate interests (who, it turns out, are being funded with nefarious Middle Eastern money). Problem is, “Ghost Soldier” attacks these problems from the right, not the left, which makes it especially frustrating when you want to cheer at the sight of an AI data center getting absolutely wrecked. (Not to mention that some early scenes blatantly feature AI lip replacement, with characters mumbling through lines that were fixed or clarified in ADR.)
It’s no accident that “Ghost Soldier” is coming out on Veterans’ Day Weekend: it thinks it’s honoring the troops and their sacrifice by valorizing vets as shepherds who guide their helpless flock to safety. Instead, it plops them in the middle of a libertarian power fantasy as brain-dead as the people Fitz shoots with his magic missile-bullets. If the action were at least good, it would be almost enough (almost!) to forgive its odious politics and have a good junk-food time at the movies. Unfortunately, its thrills are as incorporeal as its worldview.
