June 14, 2025

🎬 The Unit (2025) – Review
⭐ Starring Tom Cruise, Regina Taylor, Glen Powell, Lashana Lynch
🎬 Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
💬 Some missions are classified. This one is personal.

Review:
The Unit (2025) is a gripping, high-stakes military thriller that blends pulse-pounding action with character-driven intensity. Directed by Academy Award-winner Kathryn Bigelow, the film explores the hidden world of elite covert operations—and the cost of duty when loyalty is tested from within.

Tom Cruise stars as Colonel Nash Carter, a legendary field commander leading “The Unit,” an off-the-books special ops team that handles threats too sensitive for public knowledge. When a botched mission in Eastern Europe leaves half the team missing and international tensions at a boiling point, Carter is forced to return to action and uncover a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of power.

Regina Taylor delivers a commanding performance as General Andrea Marshall, the Pentagon’s most respected strategist—and Carter’s longtime mentor. Their dynamic is electric, filled with tension, trust, and tough choices. Taylor brings dignity, strength, and soul to the role, standing toe-to-toe with Cruise in every scene.

Supporting the leads is a sharp ensemble cast: Glen Powell as a brash new recruit who may know more than he lets on, and Lashana Lynch as a field operative questioning the true mission.

The action is grounded and intense—urban gunfights, nighttime HALO drops, and a climactic siege on a rogue private military base deep in the Carpathian Mountains. Yet the film never forgets the emotional stakes: these are warriors with secrets, scars, and families left behind.

Bigelow brings her trademark realism and tension, reminiscent of Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker, while Cruise turns in one of his most mature performances to date—still kinetic, but with a weariness that gives Carter real weight.

The script balances adrenaline with introspection. One standout line from Taylor’s character encapsulates the tone:
“You don’t just train soldiers. You build weapons—and pray they never forget they’re still human.”

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.7/5)
Smart, emotional, and expertly executed—The Unit is a riveting modern war film led by powerful performances and anchored by moral complexity. Cruise and Taylor are phenomenal.