Review of Lone Survivor (2013) by Radare33 — 22 Jan 2014

A film that, while having decent action scenes, is ultimately less than average. What brings this film down is not the gun battles or the ham-fisted patriotism, no no. It's the logic and the script: they are horrible to say the least. The dialogue isn't bad--in fact the characterization is great, with the leads and supporting cast all feeling like real people. The issue is, no thought went into making this script, or the logic, make any kind of sense. The scene that likely drew people to the theaters (where the operation to kill a Taliban leader is compromised by non-combatants) was poorly thought out. Unless this is a case of actual human beings being this stupid (this is based on a true story after all), the writers have made a scenario where US Marines were unable to use their heads and MARCH the compromises up the hill with them to the extraction zone, and THEN cut them loose. instead, they argue about whether to shoot the civies, tie them up and leave them to die, or cut them loose right then and there.

Now, you probably aren't a writer... or a soldier. But seriously,yhis shouldn't be too hard to problem solve...

Another issue was the other US forces that were dropped in the immediate area; when the shooting between Wallberg's group and the Taliban started, where the hell where they? Did they not hear all the AK-47 fire and RPG's going off? Or did they decide to hightail it out of there when the **** hit the fan? The film also goes into ridiculous territory when it decides to exceed "soldiers being injured and shot" and goes into "Watch us throw these idiots off a cliff. Twice. Oh, and they don't die. MARINES ****.

In the end, this film does not invoke a sense of empathy and pity for the US Marines who faced this situation; I'm gonna go on a limb and say that the actual Marines they based the characters off of were not this stupid. The Marines in this film are portrayed as one thing only: Idiots. They could have used their heads and extracted with no casualties, but instead allowed the "compromise" of their operation to bolt down the mountain and warn the Taliban that there were Marines up there. Thanks to the two idiots in charge (the ones who advocated letting them go), the two soldiers just following orders died as a result. One of the two aforementioned idiots was also gunned down, a Chinook helicopter a full of US soldiers (15-20 I think) was shot down by an RPG, and a whole village of innocent civilians was nearly wiped out when the Taliban came to kill the Last Idiot.

That's what the film really should have been called: "Last Idiot Standing." Had the morons in charge used their heads, the lives of 50+ people wouldn't have been screwed up or destroyed that day. Any inspirational message this film tries to convey is drowned out in the sea of stupid that is this script. Up to you if you wanna watch, but I say "Avoid".