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Lone Survivor (2013) – Review

I don’t know about you, but modern war films are a little tougher for me to embrace than ones that concern themselves over older conflicts. For example, while movies that cover the events of a World War or even Vietnam feel like “safer” territory due to their position in human history, the newer stuff always feels a little awkward to me due to the fact that in some ways, the conflicts detailed are still sometimes going on. Not making things particularly better is that a lot of films that feature American troops battling abroad tends to come complete with a ton of flag waving that makes things feel less like a story and more like a glorified, and very expensive, recruitment video.
That’s not to say that the men and women who fight for their countries shouldn’t be honored, but when I came to Lone Survivor – the first of the five collaborations between Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg – I was expecting another muscular salute-fest that was gearing up to pummel me with unrestrained military adoration and robust patriotism. Never let it be said that I don’t appreciate it when when I’m wrong.

In 2005, as the war in Afghanistan continues, we focus on a four-man SEAL reconnaissance team who have been sent out on a counter-insurgent mission to lay eyes on Taliban leader Ahmad Shah in the mountain terrain of the Korangal Valley. Led by Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy, the crew of Marcus Luttrell, Danny Dietz and Matthew Axelson arrive at their position only to discover that their vantage point doesn’t offer an optimal view of their target. However, after they shift their position, they find two, huge, stumbling blocks that could threaten both their lives and their mission.
The first is that the surrounding mountains means that getting a message to their superiors is next to impossible, and the second is that they run into a goat herder and two young boys who could give away their position. Rules of engagement insist that the SEALs have to let them go unharmed despite the fact that one of them is in possession of a Taliban walkie talkie. However, even though Matthew and Danny are cool with ensuring the herders don’t give them away by killing them, Marcus stands firm until Michael gives the order that the villagers must be spared and the mission scrubbed.
However, this leads to a major problem. The four SEALs now have to get to a place where they can be picked up before the Taliban are warned about their presence. However, those worrying issues are made all the more dangerous by the fact that the four American’s still can’t get through to their base to request a badly needed exfil. Soon the Taliban forces are swarming toward them and bullets start buzzing though the air like lethal wasps, but despite the rather ominous title and the fact this is based on a true story, can this close-knit team survive being outnumbered with no rescue forthcoming?

At times throughout his career, Peter Berg has been referred to as “the thinking man’s Michael Bay” presumably because despite a similar love for bombast and an adoration for the military that borders on being a fetish, the filmmaker manages to include genuine emotion in his movie and some sense of political balance. This proves to be in effect throughout the runtime of Lone Survivor, a movie that bounces back from its somewhat spoilerish title by delivering more than just hard hitting gun battles and Navy SEALs barking “Hooyah” at one another. Of course, that’s not to say that there isn’t a multitude of weapons fired and that the quartet of main characters all look virtually identical with their matching beards and boonie hats – but while Berg is content to go down some familiar roads with his true story, he ensures that the real people portrayed within are at least more three dimensional than most of the worst offenders of the genre.
However, the main bulk of the movie is Berg staging an extended firefight that sees our four SEALs pursued from one end of a perilous mountain range to the other, when ethics causes their mission to go horribly awry. You could argue that staging such a huge and prolonged action sequence that contains countless RPG explosions and two completely separate moments where the characters are required to hurl themselves off the side of cliffs in order to stay ahead of their attacks (think Chris Farley in Black Sheep, or Andy Samberg in Hot Rod – but way, way worse) is just another exercise in machismo, but once the bullets start flying, you can immediately sense that something is different.

Obviously, like most directors handling similar material, Berg is dedicated to putting the viewer right in the middle of the fight with all the visceral emotions that come along with it, but rather than stopping at immaculate editing and flawless sound design, Lone Survivor separates itself from the crowd by having its cast get rapidly more beaten and battered as the situation continues. Bullet hits, flesh wounds, branch tears, blunt force trauma – it all mounts up as our heroes get progressively weaker (Hell, one of them has a bullet wound in the back of the head that he had no idea was there) and it all ties into a lengthy opening credits sequence that details the amount of punishment you have to be able to endure to become a SEAL in the first place.
If there’s a flaw, it’s that the four leads have little to distinguish themselves from countless other real-life characters from other modern war films other than the actors chosen to portray them. Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster and Emile Hirsch all get to do the pre-battle banter that contains random discussions from everything from decorating colour schemes to Arabian horses. Later yet, they also get to stretch the thespian muscles a little more when they have a short, but intense debate about the killing of prisoners (another director may have made that the whole film), but mostly the cast has to deliver their lines screaming as they fire at a swarming, approaching enemy.
However, while the majority of the film certainly has guts and muscles thanks to the superlatively shot action sequences, it’s the later scenes that add some much needed heart. As the titular Lone Survivor cannot carry on under his own steam, the arrival of anti-Taliban locals plays up to the good-foreigner/bad-foreigner trope that a lot of other Afghanistan-set films struggle with, but thanks to the script making it the entire final third of the film, Berg avoids making it a cursory detail that only seems to be there to deflect claims of racism, and has it actually mean something. Come for the blistering action, sure, but while some will write off Lone Survivor as yet another flag waving exercise, all involved ensure that there’s some vital humility and humanity among the explosions.

More interested in saluting the toughness and resilience found in war, rather than pursuing more political themes, Berg has delivered a pounding action film that makes you feel every impact. However, it doesn’t do so at the total expense of humanity, be it the bond between combat brothers, or the kindness of a complete stranger. Yes, mournful voiceovers are deployed and photos of the dead are displayed, but Lone Survivor di
boasts a beating heart among all those bullets.
🌟🌟🌟🌟

#2010s #2013 #AlexanderLudwig #BenFoster #EmileHirsch #EricBana #FilmReview #LoneSurvivor #MarkWahlberg #PeterBerg #TaylorKitsch #War

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Lone Survivor (2013) – Review

I don’t know about you, but modern war films are a little tougher for me to embrace than ones that concern themselves over older conflicts. For example, while movies that cover the events of a World War or even Vietnam feel like “safer” territory due to their position in human history, the newer stuff always feels a little awkward to me due to the fact that in some ways, the conflicts detailed are still sometimes going on. Not making things particularly better is that a lot of films that feature American troops battling abroad tends to come complete with a ton of flag waving that makes things feel less like a story and more like a glorified, and very expensive, recruitment video.
That’s not to say that the men and women who fight for their countries shouldn’t be honored, but when I came to Lone Survivor – the first of the five collaborations between Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg – I was expecting another muscular salute-fest that was gearing up to pummel me with unrestrained military adoration and robust patriotism. Never let it be said that I don’t appreciate it when when I’m wrong.

In 2005, as the war in Afghanistan continues, we focus on a four-man SEAL reconnaissance team who have been sent out on a counter-insurgent mission to lay eyes on Taliban leader Ahmad Shah in the mountain terrain of the Korangal Valley. Led by Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy, the crew of Marcus Luttrell, Danny Dietz and Matthew Axelson arrive at their position only to discover that their vantage point doesn’t offer an optimal view of their target. However, after they shift their position, they find two, huge, stumbling blocks that could threaten both their lives and their mission.
The first is that the surrounding mountains means that getting a message to their superiors is next to impossible, and the second is that they run into a goat herder and two young boys who could give away their position. Rules of engagement insist that the SEALs have to let them go unharmed despite the fact that one of them is in possession of a Taliban walkie talkie. However, even though Matthew and Danny are cool with ensuring the herders don’t give them away by killing them, Marcus stands firm until Michael gives the order that the villagers must be spared and the mission scrubbed.
However, this leads to a major problem. The four SEALs now have to get to a place where they can be picked up before the Taliban are warned about their presence. However, those worrying issues are made all the more dangerous by the fact that the four American’s still can’t get through to their base to request a badly needed exfil. Soon the Taliban forces are swarming toward them and bullets start buzzing though the air like lethal wasps, but despite the rather ominous title and the fact this is based on a true story, can this close-knit team survive being outnumbered with no rescue forthcoming?

At times throughout his career, Peter Berg has been referred to as “the thinking man’s Michael Bay” presumably because despite a similar love for bombast and an adoration for the military that borders on being a fetish, the filmmaker manages to include genuine emotion in his movie and some sense of political balance. This proves to be in effect throughout the runtime of Lone Survivor, a movie that bounces back from its somewhat spoilerish title by delivering more than just hard hitting gun battles and Navy SEALs barking “Hooyah” at one another. Of course, that’s not to say that there isn’t a multitude of weapons fired and that the quartet of main characters all look virtually identical with their matching beards and boonie hats – but while Berg is content to go down some familiar roads with his true story, he ensures that the real people portrayed within are at least more three dimensional than most of the worst offenders of the genre.
However, the main bulk of the movie is Berg staging an extended firefight that sees our four SEALs pursued from one end of a perilous mountain range to the other, when ethics causes their mission to go horribly awry. You could argue that staging such a huge and prolonged action sequence that contains countless RPG explosions and two completely separate moments where the characters are required to hurl themselves off the side of cliffs in order to stay ahead of their attacks (think Chris Farley in Black Sheep, or Andy Samberg in Hot Rod – but way, way worse) is just another exercise in machismo, but once the bullets start flying, you can immediately sense that something is different.

Obviously, like most directors handling similar material, Berg is dedicated to putting the viewer right in the middle of the fight with all the visceral emotions that come along with it, but rather than stopping at immaculate editing and flawless sound design, Lone Survivor separates itself from the crowd by having its cast get rapidly more beaten and battered as the situation continues. Bullet hits, flesh wounds, branch tears, blunt force trauma – it all mounts up as our heroes get progressively weaker (Hell, one of them has a bullet wound in the back of the head that he had no idea was there) and it all ties into a lengthy opening credits sequence that details the amount of punishment you have to be able to endure to become a SEAL in the first place.
If there’s a flaw, it’s that the four leads have little to distinguish themselves from countless other real-life characters from other modern war films other than the actors chosen to portray them. Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster and Emile Hirsch all get to do the pre-battle banter that contains random discussions from everything from decorating colour schemes to Arabian horses. Later yet, they also get to stretch the thespian muscles a little more when they have a short, but intense debate about the killing of prisoners (another director may have made that the whole film), but mostly the cast has to deliver their lines screaming as they fire at a swarming, approaching enemy.
However, while the majority of the film certainly has guts and muscles thanks to the superlatively shot action sequences, it’s the later scenes that add some much needed heart. As the titular Lone Survivor cannot carry on under his own steam, the arrival of anti-Taliban locals plays up to the good-foreigner/bad-foreigner trope that a lot of other Afghanistan-set films struggle with, but thanks to the script making it the entire final third of the film, Berg avoids making it a cursory detail that only seems to be there to deflect claims of racism, and has it actually mean something. Come for the blistering action, sure, but while some will write off Lone Survivor as yet another flag waving exercise, all involved ensure that there’s some vital humility and humanity among the explosions.

More interested in saluting the toughness and resilience found in war, rather than pursuing more political themes, Berg has delivered a pounding action film that makes you feel every impact. However, it doesn’t do so at the total expense of humanity, be it the bond between combat brothers, or the kindness of a complete stranger. Yes, mournful voiceovers are deployed and photos of the dead are displayed, but Lone Survivor di
boasts a beating heart among all those bullets.
🌟🌟🌟🌟

#2010s #2013 #AlexanderLudwig #BenFoster #EmileHirsch #EricBana #FilmReview #LoneSurvivor #MarkWahlberg #PeterBerg #TaylorKitsch #War