Any heroic soldier movie is going to have some troubling, complex moral implications if the film is even trying to be anything more than propaganda. And I would argue that Lone Survivor succeeds at being a thrilling, harrowing tale of a compromised mission and the ruthless effectiveness of Navy Seal training that takes a few steps in the right direction to avoid being propaganda.
I can simultaneously be the first person to cry in a dramatic moment, even an overwrought one, and also be the guy who rolls his eyes first at chest-thumping patriotism or jingoism. So I was by no means someone who was guaranteed to be a fan of Lone Survivor. If it had played up the cheese, I may have cried a little, but my tears tend to prove nothing in terms of ultimate quality. And if it had blindly extolled the virtues of Amurica, I would have checked out. Instead, it threaded a needle, providing thrilling entertainment, first and foremost, and some nods to more complex issues underlying the war in Afghanistan.
An action/thriller/drama hybrid from the creator of Friday Night Lights, Peter Berg (bouncing back with grace from his critical/box office dud Battleship), Lone Survivor absolutely FEELS like a product of its creative team in a variety of ways. You’ve got Taylor Kitsch in there, for one thing, and even a musical score from the band Explosions In The Sky. Also, much like the Friday Night Lights TV series, the story kind of revels in Americana while still finding relevant and interesting angles to explore.
I could see many people not buying the hybrid approach this film takes. Sometimes the drama and the action collide a little bit awkwardly. I came out of the film seeing it as a character-driven war-siege film that clicks more often than it doesn’t. The vast majority of screen time is given to an impeccably paced and executed mountainous gun battle between our lead soldiers and forces of the Taliban. Our leads are Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, and Emile Hirsch (all displaying hard-won six pack abs and pretty solid dramatic chops to complement their on-screen chemistry) who are playing real soldiers from this “based on a true story” battle recounted by Marcus Luttrell (Wahlberg) in his book of the same name.
The violence of Lone Survivor is cold, calculated, precise, unrelenting, and disturbing. It is also, for the most part, tastefully done. When there are shocking moments of on-screen violence (and there are many), I tended to recoil. Sometimes I questioned the wisdom of displaying such violence on-screen, but in the end, the themes of harsh reality that run throughout the movie seemed to be the real driving factor behind displaying the violence, and not a spirit of titillation. Although at this point in 2014, one has trouble sorting out military-style violence displayed on screen through rifle scopes from the hyper-realistic military violence found in video games like Call Of Duty, etc. But again, I simply maintain that the violence is disturbing, but effective to the telling of this story.
The title, by the way, is a bit of a spoiler; but the great thing is that it doesn’t matter. The film defies you to not be engaged and thrilled in spite of potentially spoilery knowledge. After a jaw-dropping opening credit montage of seemingly real footage of Navy Seal training that establishes the supreme badassery of our heroes, Lone Survivor begins with a seriously wounded Wahlberg being airlifted. The scene is chaotic and a dreamy internal monologue is being delivered by Wahlberg’s character. The internal monologues that bookend the film are probably the worst part about the movie. I barely remember what he was saying because it basically boiled down to stuff you read on bumper stickers. Brotherhood, heroism, “part of me died on that mountain” kind of stuff. Keep the bookends if you need to, but dropping this speechifying would’ve majorly increased the effectiveness of the film, although it would have narrowed the audience a little bit as well. As it stands, I’d be virtually certain that Lone Survivor will be a big hit across popular America.
Lone Survivor does a pretty excellent job of introducing you to our core soldiers, fleshing them out, and giving them at least two dimensions: some clues to their civilian lives back home, and the aforementioned excellent chemistry between the men as a team. It rises above slasher movie syndrome, where you know every single character is going to bite it except for one final girl. In those slasher films, if they’re not done right you check out from those characters and just wait for their gruesome death. After the opening helicopter sequence, we get a “Three days earlier” title card, and the story gets underway. At first I folded my arms, thinking, “Okay movie, I’m fairly certain you are killing off everyone I’m being introduced to now, so do your best to get me emotionally invested.” And then I did. Kitsch and Emile Hirsch seemed like wild cards to me. The former has some cinematic sins to atone for, and the latter has disappeared into several roles, but “action hero” is the most unlikely of all. But they both won me over. Ben Foster and Wahlberg have proven their reliability over many unhinged tough guy roles, and together they heighten this movie and provide it with a beating, human heart.
The interesting ethics come into play next. I won’t offer any serious spoiler beyond what the studio has already handed you. But when the operation begins to go wrong, our leads have an interesting debate about what to do with some captives they’ve encountered. Should they kill the captives to save their skins and their mission? But that would violate the “rules” of war. What other options do they have when they realize there are far more Taliban forces at the foot of the mountain than they were anticipating? The decisions they make feel real. These are human beings, friends. They debate, argue, and ultimately make a decision. The movie won’t force the consequences of the decision they ultimately make down your throat, but different audiences might come away with some troubling ideas about what they would have done in a similar situation.
When the fire fight begins, it was like I took a big deep breath at the outset and never caught up for the next 40 minutes. I’m an action movie junkie who has seen it all. But somehow Berg takes this mountainside battle and distinguishes it as an excellent set piece that rises above the crowded Hollywood archives. Yet again, the chemistry of the leads anchors the sequence. But the tactical element is interesting, too. How do you fight a four-on-hundreds battle on the side of a rocky mountain? The answers will floor you. And the sound design will have you feeling each bullet whiz past you. Honestly, I don’t often specifically notice a film’s sound design, but Lone Survivor opts for a mostly-music-free siege sequence filled with incredible sound work that put me right in the middle of the battle more than any 3-D film ever has.
The third act of the movie took a surprising left turn for me, and again, I don’t want to go into any spoilers, but I will indicate that in the third act the film managed to alleviate another of my ethical concerns in a smart and “audience-friendly” kind of way. The movie offers an opportunity for there to be an Afghani hero. So much of my discomfort during the violence of this film came simply from the sight of so many brown-skinned people being killed in the midst of battle. This is obviously a major ethical concern surrounding all of the wars we’ve fought in the middle east and beyond. So who knows if the film truly followed the historical Luttrell’s journey authentically or not, but I was very relieved to see the film produce a heroic Afghani and rise above the “all Afghanis are Taliban” notion in an intentional way.
Another interesting ethical concern cropped up for me at the end. We are offered a fairly treacly “we can be heroes” song after the film proper ends, and then we see a stream of real life photos of many of the soldiers we had seen in the film. I will grant you that I believe all four of our main leads were, in reality, white males. But wow, Lone Survivor really did a proper white-washing job in its casting that is unfortunate to say the least. The real men of “Operation Red Wing” appear to have been extremely racially diverse, and the movie really should have reflected this in its casting. This is an important issue that Hollywood needs to rise above, so I’m going to call it out until real progress gets made. Does this ruin the film? No. And again, I believe the leads were all historically white. But would it have been hard to fill the cast with diversity to reflect the truth? Not at all. This was just a weird experience in that they broadcast their whitewashing to the world when contrasting their cast against the real photos at the end.
But now I sound like I’m picking on Lone Survivor. There are issues: the bumper sticker bookend monologues being perhaps the biggest from a story perspective, and the cast being stuffed to the brim with Whitey being another. And while the dramatic elements sometimes crash into the action-thriller elements awkwardly, this is ultimately a successful picture. I didn’t feel like the characters were supermen, but rather products of a ruthless and frankly incredible training regimen which produces soldiers who can fight above and beyond their instincts (screaming at them to run and hide). Lone Survivor has no interest in convincing you of the validity of the war in Afghanistan, but rather shows you these men, this unit, and their harrowing tale. The ethics of the film could allow for some “bad fans” to leave the theater thumping their chests for Amurica. But they’ll also allow a more discerning viewer to reflect on survival and sacrifice and the inherent bravery built into both the American and Afghani cultures.
And I’m Out.