Don’t Hesitate (2021)

Directed by: Shariff Korver | 87 minutes | drama | Actors: Joes Brauers, Spencer Bogaert, Tobias Kersloot, Omar Alwan

On a mission somewhere in the Middle East, a car in a convoy of Dutch soldiers goes off the road in a somewhat silly way. The stranded car is full of valuable military technology and can therefore not just be left behind. A group of soldiers must provide security until extra help arrives to drag the material away. In the end, three of that group stay behind with the car, because the others go to seek help in the desert area because of scarce provisions. Calm Erik (Joes Brauers), insider Roy (Spencer Bogaert) and Mark (Tobias Kersloot), the rooster, just have to clear things up with the three of them. ‘Do Not Hesitate’ by director Shariff Korver presents the perfect recipe for a disastrous military mission.

Everything that can go wrong will go wrong in ‘Do Not Hesitate’. Never before has a group of soldiers been so ill-prepared or so weakly anticipating the situation around them. It’s almost as if they’ve had no military training, let alone a briefing on their mission. Nevertheless, in this emergency, Erik takes the lead of rank and the three boys slog on. They fight each other more often than an enemy, if any. In addition, the three are harassed by a local boy (Omar Alwan), because Thomas mistook his goat for the enemy and casually shot the innocent animal. The nameless boy demands compensation for his dead goat, slowly driving the soldiers to despair.

‘Do Not Hesitate’ clearly maneuvers the viewer into the position of the foot soldiers. Their perspective is also that of the viewer, very closely. The story focuses mainly on the psychological aspects of the crisis situation and how force majeure puts the mutual relationships between Erik, Mark and Roy on edge. The constant lurking danger causes the men a lot of stress and disrupts their general functioning. Unfortunately, the film keeps insisting on the unpredictability and stress of this situation and that becomes predictable after a while. In addition, the way the soldiers handle the mission is sometimes unrealistically frivolous, almost to the point of rudeness. As if they were standing by the side of the road during a camping holiday, the three soldiers hang around that valuable car. The three remaining characters also show little depth. The calm and cordial Erik is boss against his will and thanks. Roy has withdrawn and bottled up his anger out of impotence. Mark is very busy, mostly self concerned and cynical about the situation. These are real characters that just about every war movie comes up with. Plus, you can see from their reactions to the goat situation how clichéd the characters are.

The most interesting part of “Do Not Hesitate” comes at the end when the three are allowed to say goodbye and are prepared for their return to civilian life. Ironically, that was the starting point of this project for director Korver. He had read about decadent goodbye holidays for Dutch soldiers on Greek islands. There they indulged in drink, drugs, sex, and sometimes violence. Korver really wanted to do something with that, but he was mainly concerned about what possibly preceded those excesses.

Why aren’t more Dutch films made about the return of soldiers to the Netherlands? After all, there are already so many films about what it is like at the front itself, the competition is fierce, especially internationally. Wouldn’t a film about those goodbye parties and the difficult return to civil society also cause more controversy in the Netherlands, instead of another genre crippled war story about moral choices under stress in Verweggistan? Or at the very least make the place of playback concrete. Or is calling Afghanistan politically and socially too sensitive at the moment?

Bottom line, ‘Don’t Hesitate’ is a not unkind attempt to investigate what a military mission in a faraway place does to the morale of young people. It is a pity that this production then hesitates to concretize where that gray area on the world map lies and almost completely sidelines the politics of ‘home’. Above all, the monotonous characters and their flat development play tricks on the film. Korver’s film may well be in the slipstream of ‘De Oost’ (Jim Taihuttu, 2021), but unfortunately it is not a real competition for that film.