Home is where the war is.
Kawa: I don't really know who you are.
Jasem: We're the men who killed the men who killed your uncle. If you need to know more than that, then you shouldn't take the hat.
Jasem: We're the men who killed the men who killed your uncle. If you need to know more than that, then you shouldn't take the hat.
Mosul is a Netflix war film directed by Matthew Michael Carnahan and produced by the The Russo Brothers. It is based on the book, The Desperate Battle to Destroy ISIS by Luke Mogelson, telling the true story of an Iraqi SWAT team turned Special Forces squad.
In the waning months of the tyrannical rule of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/the Levant (ISIS/ISIL, or the Arabic Daesh) over fallen Iraqi territories, the surviving members of the Nineveh Province SWAT encounter a group of pinned-down Iraqi police holding out in an abandoned café. After rescuing them, they induct a young policeman, Kawa, into their ranks for an unspecified mission deep into the falling lines of the Islamic State.
Kawa and the Nineveh SWAT team venture into Daesh-held districts all while witnessing the atrocities left in their wake; orphaned children, escaping civilians caught in the crossfire, mass looting by retreating Daesh forces and the utter destruction of their once-beautiful hometown. As the casualties mount, Kawa will discover the truth behind the SWAT's mysterious mission and the depths of what he will do in order to survive the conflict in Mosul.
The film contains examples of:
- And the Adventure Continues: Even after sustaining so much casualties and finally securing Waleed's family, Kawa declares his intention to help the rest of the team find their remaining families right before the credits roll.
- Anyone Can Die: Many of the SWAT members die throughout the movie. Especially the ones with Mentor Occupational Hazard.
- Army of Thieves and Whores: At one point the SWAT team members talk about how many of Daesh's fighters were once common criminals that the SWAT team themselves were largely responsible for imprisoning long before the rise of Daesh. When most of them broke out during Daesh's rule, the criminal members took the opportunity to find and attempt to destroy the families of the SWAT team as petty revenge.
- Attack Drone: The SWAT team encounters multiple Daesh drones with C4 explosives strapped to them. One drone manages to destroy one of their team's Humvees but are later saved from more drones by PMU forces who shoot them down.
- Blatant Lies: Jameel claims that he knew the SWAT team wouldn't be in the café when he signalled the Daesh bomb truck to attack the site and that he made sure by looking out for him. Kawa immediately points out that he was in fact watching Jameel do the deed, but clearly saw that he had barely even looked at the café while tossing the signal smoke.
- Booby Trap: Jasem is killed by an explosive strapped to a random crate of contraband when he carelessly picks it up.
- Boom, Headshot!: Thaer is shot in the head when the side angle of his turret exposes him to a Daesh sniper.
- Chekhov's Gun: After the cafe shootout, we see Waleed dropping something into his boot. At the very end of the film, we learn that it is a key to the apartment where his wife and daughter are held.
- Child by Rape: Waleed's wife reveals to her husband about her recent unwanted pregnancy, made by the Daesh fighter "appointed" to be her "husband" during the occupation.
- Corrupt Cops:
- Jasem breaks the ugly truth to Kawa that many of the Daesh fighters he has executed were once former cops or army personnel who have sold their souls to the group's false promises.
- Kawa's old partner Jameel betrays them by ratting out their old position at the café by signalling a suicide truck to blow them all up.
- The SWAT team bribes the Iraqi Green Zone Federal Police and Coalition military for them to forget that they had ever passed through. They get through the safe zone without difficulty.
- Crapsack World: The titular city of Mosul is pretty much this after four years of occupation by radical fighters who care little for the people they claim to protect. You know things are bad now when the characters reminisce about happier times back when the Americans were still in charge post-2003 invasion.
- Cultural Posturing: When Iranian Special Forces Commander Isfahani has his buttons pushed by Jasem when the latter insists Iraq still needs to be free from Iranian subjugation, Isfahani retorts that Iraq hasn't truly been an independent and prosperous nation since Ancient Babylon and would be lost without its Persian ally. His bits of cultural posturing is Truth in Television, as large swathes of Iranian propaganda is about Persia's relative independence compared to its Levantine Arab neighbors and the fact that its history dates back thousands of years before its relatively modern Gulf Arab neighbors.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Nineveh Province SWAT members wear black uniforms and drive black-painted Humvees. They are definitely the good guys compared to Daesh fighters who are colourful in their clothing choices and gear.
- Death of a Child: One of the victims of the civilian checkpoint shooting is a very young boy, whose mother is last seen wailing over.
- The Determinator: All of the SWAT fighters are this. They have taken staggering amounts of casualties since the start of the resistance against Daesh but despite overwhelming odds, they still press onto their mission.
- Dies Wide Open: Akram is shot near the climax of the film and is last seen slumped next to a wall eyes wide open, but Waleed confirms him as dead.
- Due to the Dead: The SWAT team takes great care in transporting and offloading their dead whenever they can, even pausing for a while to give prayers for the deceased. Even when pinned down behind enemy lines, they make a promise to come back for the bodies of their fallen comrades when possible. This respect does not extend to dead Daesh fighters, whom the team either ignore, loot or take selfies with.
- Dwindling Party: Even before Kawa joins the group, the Nineveh Province SWAT Team used to number over 30 men and 6 Humvees. The film begins with a dozen left in 3 Humvees, and only gets smaller as they continue on their mission.
- Enemy Mine: The Popular Mobilization Unit
that the Nineveh SWAT Team encounters are essentially a puppet insurgent paramilitary under the control of Iranian advisors, but with at least one common enemy: Daesh. While their meeting is tense, both sides eventually agree to exchange goods peacefully before the SWAT team moves on to their next objective. - Evil Is Petty: Daesh snipers take the time to snipe civilians trying to flee to liberated sections of the city. They're punishing them for refusing to act as Human Shields.
- A Father to His Men: Major Jasem refers to all members of his SWAT team his "sons." During breaks, he's regularly seen checking on their well-being as well as issuing them their pay. Every death in his team weighs heavily on him.
- Foreshadowing: In the beginning, Kawa is asked by Major Jasem if he was married, to which the former replies that if he was, he wouldn't ever step foot into the wrong side of the city. This somehow sets off Waleed who almost comes over to kick Kawa's ass were it not for his buddies restraining him. When we learn of the true mission of the team was to locate and evacuate members of the SWAT team's families, including Waleed's wife and daughter, it becomes a lot more understandable in hindsight.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Downplayed with the Nineveh SWAT. While they were already an elite unit before the war came to Mosul, they were simply police officers trained for taking on criminal gangs and domestic terrorists, conscripted by the Iraqi military to defend the city. By the time the film begins, they've become one of the nation's deadliest and most highly-decorated special forces units, occupying some of the highest spots on Daesh's most wanted list.
- Grenade Hot Potato: In the opening firefight, Kawa manages to toss back a grenade thrown earlier by a Daesh fighter. It blows up the original sender spectacularly.
- Hypocrite: For all their talk about fighting for Islam and preaching their moral high ground against foreign "infidels", the Daesh fighters' complete lack for anything resembling religious piety is lampshaded when Jasem comes across a large stash of Western pornographic material after clearing one of their hideouts.Jasem: [disgusted] Everything about them is empty.
- I Have a Family: Jameel claims he was forced to work for Daesh, lest they come for his family living in the USA.
- It's Personal: The Mosul SWAT leader makes this trope a requirement for new members to be accepted into the group. Major Jasem claims that only those that have been wounded and/or witnessed their loved ones die to Daesh are trustworthy enough to fight by his side. He is proven right when Kawa's old partner Jameel, who hadn't claimed any personal grudge against Daesh is later revealed to be a traitor working for them.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: During an assault on a Daesh bunker, Youness accidentally runs into the firing line of Akram and is shot in the back of the head by friendly fire. Akram is devastated in the aftermath of the fight, but Jasem assures him it was neither their fault due to how chaotic the battle was. An errant grenade thrown by Waleed also wounds Kawa accidentally in the same battle, but he recovers.
- Leave No Survivors: The default policy of the SWAT team regarding the Daesh fighters. No mercy of any kind is given to them, even the captured or surrendering ones.
- Majorly Awesome: The team's leader Jasem is this in spades. He leads a ragtag group of police and SWAT officers through a war-torn Mosul.
- Mentor Archetype: Major Jasem takes Kawa under his wing by teaching him urban tactics and formations on-the-fly.
- Mercy Kill: Inverted. Waleed stops Kawa from finishing off a fatally-wounded Daesh sniper who had earlier intentionally shot and killed civilians, just to let the dying bastard suffer. Kawa later passes the message to another team member to refrain from finishing off the sniper, who is still choking on his own blood ten minutes later.
- Mexican Stand Off: One occurs between the SWAT team and Commander Isfahani's men over Jameel, with the former wanting his head for selling them out to Daesh while the latter is insistent on keeping the prisoner they captured. The situation is diffused when Kawa kills his former partner with such rage that everyone backs down.
- More Dakka: The team's Humvees are fitted with a random array of any kind of machine gun they could get their hands on. They also use them to great effect suppressing Daesh snipers firing on the civilians at the checkpoint.
- Neat Freak: One particular trait of Major Jasem is his insistence of clearing the immediate area of loose garbage whenever they stop to rest. Even after the tense standoff at the PMU hideout, he still finds time to pick up several loose articles of trash around and toss them in a bin, much to the bewilderment of Colonel Afsahani. This habit also gets him killed in the end when he trips a booby trap at the Daesh compound.
- New Meat: Kawa is very new to the police force, not even having been issued an ID.
- Orphan's Ordeal: The SWAT team runs into a pair of orphans, brothers who are carting the body of a dead parent. The younger one wishes to go with the team over to the safe zone, while the elder brother stubbornly refuses to leave the body, having sworn an oath to bury them. After an argument and urgent plea by Jasem, the younger brother tearfully parts with his older brother and leaves with the team. In the safe zone, Jasem bribes (and threatens) a passing refugee family to adopt the child they picked up. The fate of the older brother is never revealed.
- The Paragon Always Rebels: Under the leadership of Commander Jasem, the SWAT team are revealed to have been AWOL from the Iraqi coalition authorities at least 3 weeks before the events of the movie.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Despite being police officers and devout, praying men, the SWAT team do not take prisoners and will execute every Daesh fighter they come across in retaliation for all the evil shit that Daesh had performed on the Iraqi populace.
- Practical Currency: While Iraqi dinars, British pounds or US dollars are still being used by the SWAT team as their pay, they also carry dozens of cigarette cartons and loose valuables as barter items, which comes in handy when they try to negotiate a trade with PMU forces for ammunition. Waleed even exchanges their shisha set for a Type-69 rocket launcher.
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Sadly as with reality, Daesh has pretty much done this in all of their occupied territories, especially Mosul.
- Reliably Unreliable Guns: The RPG the team acquires from the PMU turns out to have a dud warhead.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Applies to the whole SWAT team, who both the police and Daesh thought were dead after they went AWOL.
- Robbing the Dead: Every fallen fighter, be it their own or the enemy's is looted for what they're worth. It is noted multiple times that the team is constantly low on supplies and this being war-torn Iraq, it makes perfect sense to do so.
- Scenery Gorn: The film opens up with a pan over the absolutely devastated city of Mosul. Miles upon miles of smouldering ruins of what was once a beautiful historic city is captured in just a few panning shots.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: Kawa starts out in a police officer uniform and then dons the uniform of Jasem's men as he joins their SWAT team and steadily grows more custom to fighting Daesh and starts to undergo Took a Level in Badass. He then wears a skull mask akin to that of The Punisher (who the Iraqis adopted from the Americans as a symbol of the fight against Daesh), and much like the comic book hero, starts to more readily Pay Evil unto Evil. The last shot of the movie before it fades to black is Kawa putting on his Punisher mask once more, showing how in the course of a day, he's been hardened into a brutal fighter.
- Shout-Out: Indirectly, but the mask that Kawa dons is similar to the one of The Punisher to cover up a wound. The Iraqis witnessed American forces spray and use The Punisher logo throughout their occupation, which the Iraqis then appropriated as a symbol of their own against Daesh. Quite fitting with the brutal Pay Evil unto Evil actions Jasem's men commit against Daesh the same way the Punisher does for his opponents.
- SWAT Team: The Nineveh Province SWAT team are a group of seasoned fighters that have been resisting since day one of the Daesh occupation of Iraq. They have wrecked so much havoc and enemy casualties that Daesh has marked them as "unforgivable" and will not take prisoners from any of their ranks.
- The Reveal: The true mission that the SWAT team is undergoing is initially kept from Kawa. Even when Jasem finally trusts him enough to tell him, Kawa doesn't want to hear it anymore after only half a day of traumatic fighting. At the very end, it is revealed that their original mission to destroy a Daesh stronghold was only a pretext for getting close enough to Waleed's old home where his wife and child are waiting for his return years ago after that part of the city fell to Daesh. When command scrubbed the mission, the SWAT team essentially went AWOL in order to evacuate their own families when it became clear that Daesh were targeting them.
- Unfriendly Fire: Invoked and inverted. Thaer fires his machinegun in front of a group of panicking civilians to dissuade them from running past a minefield.
- Urban Warfare: None of the fighting conducted in Mosul is pretty. Every narrow alley the SWAT team navigates through is noted to be dangerous with the team constantly checking every angle. They utilize every aspect of close-quarters-combat including knives, point shooting and hand-to-hand combat.
- War Is Hell: And how. The movie might as well be the poster boy for this trope as applied to The War on Terror as it holds no punches in showing the sheer brutality of Daesh's actions against civilians, war crimes committed during the conflict, the harshness of Urban Warfare, especially how easy it is for friendly fire to occur and the fact that the political situation in Iraq means that the conflict is still far from over as terror cells will still loom and other powers such as Iran are still invested in the nation's chaos to spread their own agenda.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Though protagonists are nominally allied with the Iranian Special Forces Commander Isfahani against Daesh, tension springs between the group as large number of Iraqis, even though they're majority Shia like the Iranians, still don't want to be under Iranian domination and don't want them seeped into their operations.
