Review of Lone Survivor (2013) by Ola G — 31 Mar 2015

In Afghanistan, Taliban leader Ahmad Shah is responsible for killing over twenty United States Marines, as well as villagers and refugees who were aiding American forces. In response to these killings, a United States Navy SEALs unit is ordered to execute a counter-insurgent mission to capture Shah. As part of the mission, a four-man SEAL reconnaissance and surveillance team is tasked with locating Shah. These four SEALs include team leader Michael P. "Murph" Murphy (Taylor Kitsch); snipers Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) and Matthew "Axe" Axelson (Ben Foster); and communications specialist Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch). The team is inserted into the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan, where they make a trek through the mountains. Here, they begin to encounter communications problems, which would play a critical role in the following events. Upon arriving at their designated location, the SEALs are accidentally discovered by an elderly shepherd and two teenage goat herders. After a brief debate, Luttrell convinces the others that they will incite backlash if they kill the three herders. The team decides to release the herders and abort the mission, but before they can escape, they are discovered by Taliban forces. Although they manage to kill several Taliban soldiers, they find themselves heavily outnumbered and at significant tactical disadvantage. The SEAL team is left to fight for their lives...

"Lone Survivor" depicts the failed Operation Red Wings mission in 2005 in which 18 members of the US Armed Forces were killed in action, but it also depicts military courage and survival at it´s highest level. Todd McCarthy, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, described the film as being "rugged, skilled, relentless, determined, narrow-minded and focused, everything that a soldier must be when his life is on the line," while Scott Bowles of USA Today called Lone Survivor "brutal, unrelenting and ultimately moving." Peter Berg is quite good with this sort of reality based military storyline, thinking primarily about "The Kingdom" from 2007, in which you were more or less put in the movie almost smelling the gunpowder and smoke. "Lone Survivor" doesn ´t reach that sort of level, but the overall feeling of reality looms over the movie. I agree to the criticism that Berg´s focus has been more on the action scenes than on the characterisation of the SEAL team. We don´t get to know them except some small personal snippets from their lives. I reckon Berg could´ve worked around that and put a proper face and heart on each character to give more life to the movie. While praising the film for its visuals and sound effects, as well as Berg's atmospheric direction, Kyle Smith of the New York Post gave Lone Survivor a mixed review. Smith concluded his review by describing it as "a movie about an irrelevant skirmish that ended in near-total catastrophe, during a war we are not winning." The main actors (Kitsch, Wahlberg, Foster and Hirsch) does their best to play the part of these real life soldiers at war, but in the end it misses the proper dramatisation that made for example "Saving Private Ryan" much more emotional and difficult to watch. Despite the true story and the events that occurred (with some creative freedom) "Lone Survivor" becomes more or less a stereotypical war movie/first person shoot ´em up flag waver for the MTV kids and not really what I was hoping for when getting hold of the film.