This movie is straightforward and honest, and avoids the clichés that ruin many other films about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.Rather than having an agenda of trying to convince us that "War is Hell" or "War is Glorious", it simply tells an interesting story of a group of soldiers who were trying to provide water for Iraqi civilians. The cast is very good, it was nice to see some new faces instead of overexposed, worn-out actors. The direction is proficient, the combat scenes are realistic and convincing.

Set during the occupation of Iraq, a squad of U.S. soldiers try to protect a small village. Sand Castle is a film that i wanted to check for sometime now mostly for Henry Cavill's role and to be honest? I was letdown a bit he is hardly in the film he has somewhere around 15mins of screen time and he is great and one scene in particular was hilarious also Logan Marshall-Green was suprising great in his role as well and as for Nicholas Hoult? He seemed lost to me he was acting as a soldier and not playing one and the same goes for the rest of the Cast especially that scene with the cigar? at the roof? was so over the top and made no sense also the film screams at the audience 'America this and America that' but there's some great action packed war sequences and i'm gonna be honest their directed well. But this film was nowhere what i was expecting it to be and Cavill's lack of screen time made things even worse for me and even tho it's not as bad as 12 Strong is not that great either. (5/10)

I don't even know what I would have chosen as a summary line, but reading another review, one from someone who at least claims to have been in the service and pointing out things that he thought were inaccurate, made me think, yeah that's what I should write. And while we all know that Fiction is a big part of movies, when they do portray something that actually happened (or happens) we the viewers do tend to take it a bit as a given, that what we see, is what happened.If you can shut off those thoughts in the first place you can watch a war movie, that does not seem to shy away from controversy. It does paint a picture that some may call cliche, but the actors make it feel real. While we don't get deeply into their characters, we can see through the eyes of the main protagonist, his emotions and what this must do to ones psyche and mind. It's not easy to watch and it has flaws, but it is worth watching

I had expectations about this film, since Henry Cavil build quite a name of himself from Superman, Man from UNKLE... not great expectations but still. After watching it, I was not quite sure that it had a purpose. What was the meaning? That every college kid is not fit for the army? That if you destroy a village, and return at some point in time, they will still hate you? That repair works in war zones are meaningless? Both the title and the synopsis of the movie are misleading. Neither they build or had anything to do with even figuratively or literally any sand castles, or they protected a village. OK I can smooch out my thumbs and say that when you build a sand castle there will always be some douche who will destroy it. Was that it? Some of the posters of the movie are heavily misleading. Henry Cavil had, literally 2 min screen time, and couple of dialogue lines. Was he used only to sell the movie? The movie is full of inaccuracies and mistakes that it goes towards pure fiction. Probably this movie is not worth the bowl of popcorn you prepared for it...