Four stars. Rating: R, for strong war violence and pervasive profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.10.14
Color me surprised: Peter Berg
finally made another decent movie.
The actor-turned-writer/director
scored an indisputable hit with 2004’s warm-hearted Friday Night Lights, a
character-driven study of small-town Texas high school football; the film led
to an equally well-received TV series that kept fans happy for three
well-scripted seasons (with Berg supervising the entire run).
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| Having trekked to a vantage point where they can see their targeted enemy combatant, the covert SEAL team — from left, Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Marcus (Mark Wahlberg), Axe (Ben Foster) and Dietz (Emile Hirsch) — contemplate their next move. Sadly, that decision is about to be taken out of their hands. |
On the big screen, though, Berg’s
résumé didn’t merely stall; it nose-dived into overwrought wretched excess. The
Kingdom (2007) was marred by unpleasantly vicious racism; Hancock (2008) did
little but embarrass star Will Smith; and the less said about 2012’s laughably
atrocious Battleship, the better.
That’s a rather sad and pathetic
downward spiral.
I therefore held out very little
hope for Lone Survivor, upon learning that Berg was directing and scripting from
Marcus Luttrell’s gripping 2007 memoir ... which just goes to prove, once
again, the folly of rash assumptions. This film deserves place of pride
alongside A Bridge Too Far, Gallipoli, Black Hawk Down and other war
dramas that honor the grit, bravery, indomitable will and almost superhuman resilience
of overwhelmed, ground-based soldiers betrayed by circumstances beyond their
control.
Lone Survivor isn’t merely
stirring; it’s nail-bitingly tense and, ultimately, heartbreaking.
The story details a SEAL
operation code-named Operation Red Wings, which in June 2005 sent four men into
a mountainous region of Afghanistan; they were tasked with locating and killing
Ahmad Shah, a Taliban sympathizer who had orchestrated the ambush of 20 Marines
the previous week.
To say that everything went wrong
would be an understatement. Radio communications were spotty at best, absent
entirely when the subsequent crisis erupted. Worse yet, American intel
seriously underestimated the size of Shah’s resident militia. When the dust had
settled, as this film’s title warns us, only one man had survived ... and the
fatalities had expanded to include far more than the initial SEAL team.
Berg, long a gung-ho champion of
American warrior spirit, unveils this film’s credits against actual footage of
formidable SEAL training sessions; our immediate takeaway is that these men
will endure anything, battling far beyond “normal” levels of pain and
punishment, in the pursuit of successfully completing a mission and returning
home with their comrades.
It’s an impressive montage, and
it certainly sets the mood for what is to come.
We meet our protagonists
immediately prior to their mission, during a typical “waiting” period at Camp
Ouellette, at Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield. They cheerfully compete with each
other, send e-mails to loved ones back home, make plans for the future. The
day’s most significant event involves the “induction” of newbie SEAL Shane
Patton (Alexander Ludwig, appropriately enthusiastic), a process that involves
some mild hazing and considerable hoo-rah bonding.
• Buy Blu-Ray: 
and 
, only the human performers (I refuse to ennoble their efforts by calling them "actors") are real; all the backgrounds, settings, gadgets and vehicles are CGI constructs.