El sobreviviente

You get so many action movies nowadays following familiar formulas that when you watch one of them you know that, just when the good guy is about to be overcome by an overmatching enemy force, the backup arrives and saves him. The formula desensitizes you.

But when a movie tries to be based on a real story, the good guys may not come. They do not come in an hour; they do not come in a day; and if they come, they are not invincible. Real problems do not follow formulas. Real life is sobering in its horror.

Lone Survivor does not have a very original or interesting premise for an action movie. An assassination mission goes wrong. However, the quality of the cinematography, solid acting and good action is what makes this a good action film.

Not a single actor phones it in. Everyone is trying to do their best. The film is also gorgeous. The Afghanistan these guys are in is fake because the entire movie was shot in the United States, but it looks authentic and breathtaking.

The action is raw and graphic. Not in guts-on-the-floor kind of way, but falling-down-a-cliff-side kind of way. Again, you can feel the effort put in. Broken ribs and punctured lungs were involved in the making of this movie.

There is one giant nasty pink elephant in the room and that's the fact that the main event at the centre of this movie's plot is bogus. Without spoiling too much, a crucial decision is made by these supposed Navy SEAL's and there is just no way this is how that situation played out. Therefore, the story is probably a lie.

There is another issue: this mission with its predetermined ending is all there is to the story. No backgrounds are given for the characters, no events other than this mission, and there is barely any examination of their relationships with one another. I remember as a little kid, I wrote a story about an imaginary military mission. I abandoned it because I realised that it can never be that interesting to read because the range of the story is too small. This film is like that. What's worse, the title of this film gives away the ending.

But it is a testament to Lone Survivor's quality that, even though it gives almost no background information about the characters, it still manages to make you care about them. And even with the weight of a potential lie at the centre of its plot, the film still manages to be such an interesting watch.

Its lamentable that whilst Lone Survivor might be viewed as a anti war film it could just as easily be perceived as a ringing endorsement for the US military.

The plot of the film is simple enough, a group of special forces soldiers are sent to Afghanistan to assassinate a militia leader with ties to the Taliban. Due to poor planning, dodgy equipment and a general lack of resources however the mission is doomed to failure.

What follows is visceral, disturbing and above all very sad. Even if like me you are not from the United States you can not help but feel considerable sympathy as you watch a group of young men horrifically slaughtered as they take on an overwhelmingly larger enemy force.

Whats really troubling about Lone Survivor is it stubbornly refuses to shed the jingoistic overtones that could have lifted this film above the raft of other US made war movies. Questions about the waste of human life and potential, the political validity of wars fought on foreign soil,that are inherent in this film are drowned out by the "rah rah and hoopla" about God and country.

I can not as a consequence recommend this film. Indeed I'd go so far as to say it's an irresponsible film that romanticizes war, perpetuating the myth that dying on the field of battle is something other than bloody, gruesome and ultimately pointless.

If there is one thing that this film will accomplish is to make you feel something. I assure you you will not get bored watching it. Now, what you will feel will no doubt be up to you.

For myself, I felt mostly rage against a botched mission in an ineffective war. Raytheon should be annoyed that a movie about a mission failed primarily because of communication issues showed their red flashy brand on the comms equipment.

I wanted the characters to succeed, to survive, but I could not ignore the fact that they were soldiers being there only to kill an enemy commander. Having all Americans die in slow motion while scores of Taliban died instantly and kind of stupidly didn't help with the empathy. Also showing pictures of dead soldiers with their families with a pathetic American remake of Bowie's Heroes singing in the background at the end of the movie just fueled more rage. People in the field try to carry out their mission and survive, while their deaths become political and mediatic material. I didn't enjoy that.

On the other hand, the fights were realistic, the subject based on real events and, outside the pathetism described above, I did not detect a bias towards one side or the other. You will witness two hours of low tech war in all of its horror and stupidity. The actors also play well, although I like Mark Wahlberg in almost everything he does.

The story, while showing the preparation, courage and resilience of four soldiers in enemy territory, also showed other things, like the logistical blunders that lead to stupid deaths, over-reliance on technology that doesn't really work as you expect and how choices have consequences on the ground that are beyond the ability of normal courts to understand, whether looking from the legal or moral angle.

I liked a lot about the movie how it made you think long after it was over. What would have happened if they just killed the herders? What would have happened if they tied them up, went a bit down, risked a sniper shot at the enemy commander, then just ran? What would have happened if the Pashtuni would have ignored the wounded American or would have killed the Taliban scout force when they came to them? How would the mission have gone if the four guys would have known from the get go that they would be completely alone, with no support or hope for extraction?

Overall, a very emotional movie, two hours long, that shows more a general type of heroism than one with a specific purpose. Nicely directed and acted. A bit over dramatic, but then that's to be expected. Worth watching.

Based on the nonfiction book of the same name & set during the War in Afghanistan, Lone Survivor tries to recreate the US Navy SEALs' Operation Red Wings, a failed mission in which a survey team of 4 soldiers were tasked to locate the Taliban leader, Ahmad Shah. And even though it impresses in parts & has a lot in it to evoke the patriotic response from its target audience (which is American viewers obviously), Lone Survivor ends up going completely overboard in dramatizing the true events & suffers from the very clichés that most films of its genre find themselves trapped in.

What's right with this film is Peter Berg's dynamic direction, tense atmosphere, superb pacing, intense battle sequences, precision use of sound, music & relatively fine performances from its star cast who were actually capable of delivering more than what ended up being in the final print. What's wrong with it, however, is its lack of emotional depth or character development, sometimes going overly dramatic than required and too much reliance on action to push its story forward which ultimately crosses the fine line between exploration & exploitation to revel in the latter.

On an overall scale, Lone Survivor has nothing new to offer compared to what other films of this genre have already given us so far. Yes, it's brutal. Yes, it looks realistic to some extent. Yes, the battle sequences are disturbing, graphic &, in my opinion, explosively entertaining as well. But, there is also no denying that its characters remain hollow throughout its runtime, the story or characters aren't explored enough for us to invest our emotions in & all in all, this war drama is nothing less or more than a mere propaganda film, unfortunately.

Lone Survivor (2013)

A more-or-less accurate depiction of four highly capable SEAL soldiers dropped into enemy territory in Afghanistan. They were then discovered and attacked by dozens of area Taliban. The recreation is riveting, disturbing in its intensity, and eye-opening. Whatever you feel about the war there, or even about soldiers killing other soldiers, you end up admiring the sheer abilities of these fit, smart, determined men.

And only one survives (this is told in the title). So you go into it knowing it will end badly, and also that one of them (probably Mark Wahlberg, the biggest name here) will make it. If the fighting, which makes up most of the movie in the center core of it, is seemingly endless, that's part of the point. But when it shifts to a local village near the end the tale has another kind of intensity, and a welcome change.

This is straight up action material. It lacks even the layers that other movies with similar settings add (see "The Hurt Locker" for one example). But in a way that makes this distinctive. It moves in linear fashion through time, through the events, and so you barrel along without mental complication to the end. It forces everything on the action, and the realistic portrayal of the unbelievable hardship and pain, and death, that comes along the way.

Check out the overly-long Wikipedia page on this movie for lots of facts about production, and about the liberties they took with the facts. Or just watch the movie knowing that there are the usual permitted changes that dramatization requires. Even as pure fiction the movie has enough kinetic and heroic acts to succeed on its own terms.