During the opening credits, Lone Survivor director J.A. Bayona cleverly and efficiently shows us film clips of the rigorous training to which US Special Ops forces are subjected. Thus, when the film's action is ready to unfold, we have already been briefed and have a feeling for the type of men we will be watching for the next two hours. Their dedication, ruggedness and fearlessness knows no bounds. This is not a movie about some guy sitting in a cubicle in McLean, Virginia with a joy stick in his hand, remotely controlling a weapons-laden drone half way around the globe. Rather, we are elbow-to elbow with four Navy Seals as they are dropped covertly by helicopter in the treacherous Hindu Kush range. Their mission, code named Operation Red Wings, is to kill a Taliban leader, Ahmad Shah, who has been responsible for the deaths of dozens of American troops. Killing Shah might be the easy part; the four GIs also need to escape through the mountains for later rescue by another chopper.
The foursome is lead by Lieutenant Michael Murphy (an unrecognizable Taylor Kitsch from TV's Friday Night Lights). Murphy is a living legend, a human fighting machine in whom the higher ranking officers at their home air base, Bagram, have every confidence. Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) is just as tough, cool under fire and determined to see the mission through to its completion. Matt "Axe" Axelson (Ben Foster) and Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) are their brothers in arms. The four have little trouble locating Shah, whom they can see in a village through binoculars from their lofty perch. But before they can execute their sniper plans, mountain goats and their herdsmen arrive close by the Seals' hiding place, causing a disruption. Soon the men are faced not only with tactical decisions regarding their orders, but moral and ethical dilemmas as well. Even though "Murph" is the commanding officer, the other three voice their divergent opinions on what to do next. The sequence of events which comprises the final three-fourths of the movie is a direct result of Murph's decision.
In my June 7, 2013 review of The Sapphires (B+), I wrote the following:
One
of the keys to success for any movie about a small group of people --
be they singers, soldiers, cowboys, roommates or office co-workers -- is
that the story must develop the characters at least to the point where
each is not merely a support player or a cardboard one-dimensional
stereotype.
The script needs to enable the viewer to be able to differentiate among characters. That desired -- I might even go so far as to write necessary -- aspect is missing from Lone Survivor, preventing it from being more than just another very good movie. Given the fact that the story is based on an autobiography of one of the combatants -- I won't tell you which one but you'll probably know it going in if you've done any pre-viewing research -- one would think it would have been easy to incorporate a fair amount of personal history. Such is not the case. We know little about the personal histories of the four protagonists. There is only one brief attempt to portray these men as something besides programmed warriors. That attempt takes place in the afternoon hours at Bagram immediately prior to the commencement of their nighttime mission, when we see the guys playing cards or otherwise just chillin'. There was a similar scene in Zero Dark Thirty (reviewed here January 17, 2013, B+), right before the Seals left for Bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad.
Lone Survivor brings back memories of reports from the Viet Nam war that our infantry was supplied with defective M-16 rifles which were known to jam in the middle of fire fights. In the Iraq war our government failed to provide armored vehicles that were sufficient to withstand IEDs. In Lone Survivor, the radios don't work and there is a shortage of Apache helicopters, to name two of the major shortcomings. It is sad that the young people risking their lives out of a sense of patriotic duty can't count on their government to provide them with the equipment they need to carry out their missions.
The script needs to enable the viewer to be able to differentiate among characters. That desired -- I might even go so far as to write necessary -- aspect is missing from Lone Survivor, preventing it from being more than just another very good movie. Given the fact that the story is based on an autobiography of one of the combatants -- I won't tell you which one but you'll probably know it going in if you've done any pre-viewing research -- one would think it would have been easy to incorporate a fair amount of personal history. Such is not the case. We know little about the personal histories of the four protagonists. There is only one brief attempt to portray these men as something besides programmed warriors. That attempt takes place in the afternoon hours at Bagram immediately prior to the commencement of their nighttime mission, when we see the guys playing cards or otherwise just chillin'. There was a similar scene in Zero Dark Thirty (reviewed here January 17, 2013, B+), right before the Seals left for Bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad.
Lone Survivor brings back memories of reports from the Viet Nam war that our infantry was supplied with defective M-16 rifles which were known to jam in the middle of fire fights. In the Iraq war our government failed to provide armored vehicles that were sufficient to withstand IEDs. In Lone Survivor, the radios don't work and there is a shortage of Apache helicopters, to name two of the major shortcomings. It is sad that the young people risking their lives out of a sense of patriotic duty can't count on their government to provide them with the equipment they need to carry out their missions.
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