Plot: A CIA contractor (Gerard Butler) who just sabotaged an Iranian Nuclear Power Plant finds his cover blown by a whistleblower journalist. On the run, he finds himself being hunted, along with his Afghan interpreter (Navid Negahban), through hostile territory by Iranian Intelligence, the Taliban and Pakistan intelligence.

Review: Many will compare Ric Roman Waugh’s Kandahar with Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. After all, both are about Americans being hunted in Afghanistan along with their interpreters, but if you ignore how similar the premises may be, they’re actually quite different. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant was a (very good) war film, while Kandahar is more of a straightforward action flick. It’s a very tight little thriller offering further evidence that Gerard Butler makes the best mid-level action movies in the business, especially when he works with Ric Roman Waugh, arguably his best director.

In Kandahar, Butler plays a familiar role – the burnt-out,...