Writer/director Peter Berg pulled out all the stops and went for the emotional and visceral jugular with his ferocious combat film Lone Survivor, a harrowing, gut-wrenching modern war movie that deserves to sit alongside other battle-ready, anti-war classics such as Hamburger Hill, Black Hawk Down and We Were Soldiers, truly throwing the audience into the middle of a nightmarish warzone where anything can happen. Crafted with stunning technical proficiency, Lone Survivor aims to put you in the middle of a bloody, unrelenting gun battle, rarely letting up for a breath of air. And what a battle sequence it is. The fluid yet ragged cinematography from Tobias Schliessler is remarkable to behold and the crispness of the editing by Colby Parker Jr. smartly establishes concise geography and clear spatial coherence during the protracted firefight. Berg was as single-minded and determined in his directorial approach to the story as the soldiers-on-a-mission were in his narrative, centering on their attempt at doing their job and coming out of a terrible situation alive. And it’s because Berg stuck to the nitty gritty, never losing focus or succumbing to cheap politicizing, the film operates in a bluntly forceful fashion, and almost immediately kicks into high gear.
No matter what or how many creative liberties the filmmakers took with the true-story aspects of the incident (a botched mission where four Navy SEALS went up against numerous Taliban soldiers in the unforgiving mountains of Afghanistan after allowing civilians to go free), the emotional core of the film is honest and at times overwhelmingly powerful, just like great cinema should always be. It’s no spoiler to reveal that only one SEAL makes it out of the fight alive, and it’s mind-blowing to think that these guys were able to endure what they probably endured during those hellish hours. Berg smartly opens the film with real-world SEAL training footage, and by watching just two minutes of these clips, it’s easy to see how these men could become total warriors, able to drop their enemies with precise head-shots, never succumbing to fatigue or lack of food, always ready to fight and kill. Berg wisely celebrates the warrior spirit in all of the men, while never glamourizing the horrific toll that war brings to multiple societies. And most importantly, he never turned the film into a cheesy political message or soap-box statement – this is truly “War is Hell Cinema,” with a focus on the blood and guts of the situation. Persuasively acted by the grizzled quartet of Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, and Emile Hirsch, this is an unforgettable reminder of what’s been going on for over a decade during the “War on Terror.”
Podcasting Them Softly 