Starring Aaron Eckhart, the blurbs for Ambush proclaim. Also starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, they trumpet. Not true, either of them. Connor Paolo is in fact the star of this potentially rather good Vietnam war movie hobbled by a plot lacking sparkle.
A Vietnam war movie? In the 2020s? A boldly unfashionable move by Mark Burman, who directs, co-writes and produces, so presumably made the phone call that brought Eckhart and Meyers on board.
Eckhart, in what is probably a “one and done” deal in terms of days worked, plays a general ordering a team of rookie engineers into Vietcong tunnels to retrieve a vital document containing the names of agents working for the Americans. His scenes are all done on one set, at the end of a telephone line. Other than bark orders and deliver a homily wrapping things up, Eckhart plays no active role in the film.
Meyers was maybe on set for a day and a half. He plays a seasoned tracker – one who can’t get his highly trained German shepherd to do his bidding, it must be said – who looks like he’s going to be a more significant part of the action.
But he isn’t. Instead all that duty falls to Connor Paolo, who’s been in TV shows like Revenge and Gossip Girl. I’ve seen him in the films Friend Request and Stake Land and made a note both times how good he was.
He is very good again here, as a rookie engineer who thought his team were going to be digging trenches but instead have been ordered into tunnels where the Vietcong undoubtedly lurk and danger and death await.
What Ambush isn’t, for all its evasiveness over casting, is cynical. It has the makings of a good film and its cast are committed. Director Burman gets some claustrophobia going as the engineers scramble and wriggle through the subterranean terrain where most of the film takes place, encountering booby traps – scorpions tip on to the Americans below, sharpened bamboo stakes wait at the bottom of deadly pits.
Occasionally there’s a skirmish with a couple of the Vietcong, and a sudden frenzy of shouting and shooting. That’s also good. The sense of not knowing, in the murk, who everyone is. With just an army torch to light the way, what fresh danger lurks ahead?
Those pre-LED torches – you might wonder at their batteries’ remarkable lifespan. Small logistical niggles like that to one side – the clearly confused dog is another – there are more tunnels in this movie than it can stand. Or put another way, too much of the same sort of action. What might ring the changes is a shift to Meyers and his dog doing some tracking, or Eckhart’s general wrestling with his conscience over sending in boys to do a man’s job.
But no. Another character, Crawford (Mac Brandt) does turn up for a while, full of rancid bravado and armed with a flamethrower, an emblematic weapon of the Vietnam war. But he’s soon gone again.
The sense of young men unprepared for what they are encountering is strong, with Paolo particularly good as a guy in over his head trying to fake confidence or lose the trust of his men.
The score is simple and effective, with single echoed synth notes – by Nicci Kasper and Deantoni Parks, aka We Are Dark Angels – and the limber and effective cinematography by Dan Frantz also suggests everyone is hoping for more than the film delivers.
Ultimately, it doesn’t. Maybe that all starts with those “star” casting decision, which add at least 20 minutes of flab to the running time. Paolo could have held it together all on his own.
Ambush – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
