Gerard Butler Shows a Completely Different Side of Himself in This New-to-Netflix War Thriller

Throughout his career, Gerard Butler has consistently demonstrated his toughness, unflappability, and often indestructible nature in movie after movie. If he is not saving the president in the chaos of Olympus Has Fallen, he is landing a crashing aircraft and fighting bandits in Plane. But in the 2023 spy film Kandahar, now streaming on Netflix, Butler takes up a role that asks him to drop the invincible armor. He plays a character who knows his limits and second-guesses his choices, resulting in one of the more restrained and interesting turns of his career. Unlike Butler’s other movies, Kandahar is a survival thriller in which we watch him wrestle with his humanity rather than predominantly with external forces.

What Is ‘Kandahar’ About?

After collaborating with Butler on two outings—in the fantasy film Angel Has Fallen and the disaster drama Greenland—director Ric Roman Waugh trusts his leading man once more in Kandahar. Butler plays Tom Harris, an undercover CIA operative who blows his cover when a mission in Afghanistan goes sideways. After the exposure, Tom and his translator, Mo (Navid Negahban), must find a way to their extraction point organized by his CIA boss (Roman Chalmers) in Kandahar, located 400 miles away, while being hunted by elite militias. Yes, his daunting mission requires some heroics, but the unforgiving terrain and the odds stacked against him make his journey a survival endeavor.

Like many action thrillers, the film has shootouts, drone strikes, and chase sequences, but its real hook is less about its spectacle and more about Harris himself. We explore his exhaustion, his frayed nerves, and the emotional weight of his mission’s collateral damage. Recognizing his new role’s demands, Butler dials down his usual swagger, showing us a man who hesitates, calculates, and often looks like he might not make it.

‘Kandahar’ Offers Us a Gerard Butler We Have Hardly Seen

As the guy Hollywood often relies on for unshakable masculinity, Butler’s turn in Kandahar is eye-opening in relation to his acting range. Like his other heroic flicks, Kandahar gives us a Butler who is skilled in combat but whose circumstances force him to evaluate everything before making a move. Tom Harris speaks through his body language—slumped shoulders, hesitant eyes, and pauses where other action heroes would roar. It is not an outright radical shift, but it’s a notable one. Instead of the unbreakable warrior we’ve seen in the past, we watch a man who is vulnerable and could at any moment fail.

Director Ric Roman Waugh’s eye for tension ensures that the film’s spectacle doesn’t override its human stakes. While the movie might at times, like its protagonist, seem lost in the desert, this quiet human feeling injects it with a pulse. Waugh frames Tom against sweeping desert landscapes that dwarf him, depicting just how much of a speck he is in the hostile environment. Waugh’s action scenes are quick and tense, with the bulk of the film lingering on the power of silence and isolation. Added to the film’s positives is Mitchell LaFortune’s script, which provides insights into the complexities of spy operations, giving perspective to murky rival intelligence schemes and civilians caught in the middle. His firsthand experience as a former intelligence officer who lived through the messiness of such operations adds to the film’s authenticity.

Why ‘Kandahar’ Is Relevant in Today’s Espionage Landscape

Gerard Butler leaning against wall in Kandahar

Kandahar may have its shortcomings, but it stands out for how close it gets to real-world headlines. Typical action thrillers might emphasize good-versus-evil binaries of geopolitics, but Kandahar refuses that temptation by acknowledging the complicated realities of modern conflict. There’s no romanticizing of CIA missions and nor is Tom depicted as a flawless patriot. For Waugh, who is right or wrong doesn’t matter. What is important is showing the perilous effect that espionage has on operatives and civilians. He uses the desert setting as a survival backdrop that embodies the complexity and hostility of a region that has been shaped by decades of foreign interventions, with confusing, shifting alliances that result in cyclical violence.

Tom’s translator, Mo, grounds the narrative in a way that Butler’s character alone could not. This relationship adds to how the film strips down Butler to make him dependent. But Mo also sheds light on the ordinary people caught in the crossfire of intelligence wars—those whose homes, families, and futures are disrupted by conflicts out of their control. Waugh uses his dynamic with Harris to emphasize themes of trust and betrayal as lethal weapons of survival.

Kandahar may feature Gerard Butler in familiar terrain—guns, grit, and survival—but it distinguishes itself by peeling back the invincible-hero image and grounding the action in lived human stakes. Despite critics being divided about the film, Butler’s restrained performance, Waugh’s careful direction, and LaFortune’s authentic script have been convincing for fans, as the film has performed well across streaming platforms. The film’s introduction to Netflix will likely continue that trend, and you wouldn’t want to miss out on its exhilarating desert journey.

Kandahar is now available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.