Fridae

Imagine if at the end of Duck Soup, the wealthy Mrs Teasdale decides to fund a film chronicling the war between Freedonia and Sylvania, with Freedonia as the all-round innocent victim of an unprovoked belligerent invasion.

This is roughly the situation former star director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight) and a few Anglo-American actors find themselves. Yes, Georgian businessmen funded the production of 5 Days of War and yes, it is pretty much a one-sided propagandistic account of the Georgian war of 2008. Those expecting a history lesson will be disappointed, much less those expecting a minimal standard of historical veracity. This is a film where the unprovoked Georgian invasion or land grab of South Ossetia, which sparked off the war, is politely whitewashed and even disappears from the film's account of history, and where again, all the war crimes are committed by the Russian side despite an EU investigation which basically called a pox upon both houses.

What's worth watching about 5 Days of War though, is how Renny Harlin shows that even as a Hollywood exile, he still retains the power to craft magic on a middling budget. This may be a dishonest film but Renny Harlin and his team weave such a convincing, sexy story involving innocent Georgian villagers, lovelorn couples, separated families, little children hiding in church, and valiant politicians giving 'Freedom or death' speeches in the face of brutal, sadistic, or vengeance-mad Russian soldiers that you have to admit it's an entertaining tale that presses all the right buttons in a war film.

So what if this film is not at all honest about the war it purports to recount? Being funded by Georgian businessmen, it's completely fine as a work for hire. Imagine the horror if Harlin had produced, directed, and written with this film out of his own free will, script research and good intentions.