Lone Survivor

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.

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.

A truly brutal and gripping cinematic experience, Lone Survivor may be brazenly gung-ho and jingoistic, not to mention somewhat anti-climactic, but it delivers a metric tonne of thrills and contains one of the most intense and bloodiest gun fights I've ever seen in a film. It might stretch the suspension of disbelief a little too much at times, with our heroes surviving not 1 but fatal-looking cliff falls, but the excitement comes from the fact that it puts you right in the action, and you feel everything. Every bullet, every kick, every punch and every single thing the protagonist crash into. It's a bleak as Hell depiction of the savagery of war and just how strong the will to survive truly is. It's not a masterpiece, and many movies have been made with a more complex and compelling message on war, but for its sheer amount of heart-pounding action, scenes, it's definitely worth at least one watch.

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.

Greetings from Lithuania.

I read some reviews about "Lone Survivor" where it was mentioned alongside to a "Saving Private Ryan" - you can throw a rock at me if this comes close to "Saving Private Ryan" which is beyond many moons and seas compared to "Lone Survivor".

"Lone Survivor" is good action movie, with some heroic stuff (they definitely couldn't avoid that...), and i know that it's based on real events, thats why i'm giving it 8, because many of things displayed in picture were sadly true, many, but definitely not all. When someone is being killed in this movie (exept for bad guys from Taliban), it's shown in a similar way as Jim Caviezel aka.Jesus was suffering in "The Passion of the Christ" - only true American heroes die like that, not afghans who are more or less just a meat between bullets and Americans in this movie.

Overall, i liked this action picture, the sound design and sound editing were really top notch (no wonder it got 2 Oscar nominations) - you can hear every detail in the forest, every breaking bone (ye, the fall from cliffs scene was gripping). Actors were just OK, nothing special. The gunfight was terrific at least in the beginning of battle, truly terrific sound design and camera work. Later, well, when bad guys were shooting with RPG's every 2 min to our heroes, and they were suffering real good but still were able to do some heroic stuff, the tension was kinda lost.

Overall, 8/10 for me because of good production values and for that it is based on real events.