DVD Review – Lone Survivor (2013)
Based on the book of the same name, Lone Survivor chronicles the true story of Marcus Lutrell (Mark Wahlberg) and the failed Operation Red Wings, a Navy SEAL counter-insurgent mission to track and eliminate Taliban leader Ahmad Shah. The mission becomes compromised and Lutrell and his team have to face overwhelming odds and a dwindling hope of getting home in one piece.
Lone Survivor starts well and sets out its stall from the off. This is a modern, shaky-cam, gritty tale about a group of Navy SEALs and an especially dangerous mission that gets FUBAR. The cast are all decent. Marky Mark is stoic, Taylor Kitsch is thankful he’s still in films after the double whammy of John Carter and Battleship and the always underrated Ben Foster is great.
I must admit, the way the action is shot is great. It goes for a Black Hawk Down lite realism and it totally works. There’s one extended sequence where the SEALs have to battle both enemy combatants and awkward terrain. You feel every agonising scrape, break, cut and bruise and it’s insanely effective at drawing you in to what must be the unluckiest bunch of bastards ever. It’s a terrifying concept being pinned down by enemy fire and the film conveys that well.
Director Peter Berg loves this story. That much is clear from the offset. It’s a tale about bravery and brotherhood and Berg is well into that. He’s had an interesting career with his biggest film being 2008’s disappointing Hancock, but there’s no real common thread to his projects. With Lone Survivor, it really feels like a passion project and that this is a story he wanted to tell. So why the hell am I saying all this? Well, you know the saying “love is blind”? Yeah, that.
Berg is so into the story that he kind of misses the necessary shades of grey and defter touches to make the tale properly resonate. Basically, the crux of the issues revolve around some Afghani goat farmers stumbling upon the SEALs’ hiding place. With communications being down and the knowledge that letting the farmers go will almost certainly have massive repercussions, the team have to make a gut call. It reminded me of the Mass Effect series of games with their moral choice mechanic. No option is particularly good, you just have to pick one that you hope will have the least severe consequences. This is fine, but I got the feeling Berg was only seeing things in black and white.
The trouble is, there are basically no characters in this film. They all have names, snappy asides to each other, but that’s about it. There’s some concession to building a personality when one of them has an IM conversation with his wife about decorating and horses, for some arbitrary reason, but it doesn’t go far enough. I don’t feel I know these people and so I find it hard to care when they undergo trauma. When there are no decent characters, the focus falls back on their job. Personally, it isn’t enough when a film dresses someone up in a military uniform and uses that as a shortcut for “good guy” and “hero”. The script is also seriously lacking. I know Navy SEALs aren’t exactly known for soliloquys and soul-baring poetic prose, but something with a little bit more impact would have been nice and certainly eased the problem of poor characterisation.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t entertained by Lone Survivor. It’s a well shot and well acted piece. I’m just not sure if I agree with its personal politics and binary view of things.
[rating=3]
Ben Browne
Genre:
Action, Drama, Biography
Distributor:
Universal Pictures UK
Rating: 15
Running Time:
116 Minutes
Director:
Peter Berg
Cast:
Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch,ben Foster, Eric Bana, Ali Suliman
Buy:Lone Survivor [Blu-ray] [2013]
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