K-SCORE: 66
Writer/Director: Peter Berg
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Eric Bana
Spoiler Level: There’s but a lone survivor…
“apart from overusing slow-motion, Peter Berg didn’t do anything terribly wrong”
I’m not big on war films for rarely do they deliver something I’m not expecting, though, to their credit, they often deliver what they intend to. Lone Survivor is no different.
There are some nice establishing shots and the characters are okay. The picture of the war against the Taliban painted by the filmmakers is complex and semi-interesting, but, as often is the face, I found the true story behind the film more interesting than the fictional representation. So instead of watching this movie, why don’t you just go on Wikipedia and research the events and the real people. The dramatization is almost entirely unnecessary for me. All it does is introduce the actual story to me. The film is darkly entertaining, patriotic, and inspirational to an extent, but only mildly so, and again, not nearly as much as just reading about the real soldiers. Apart from overusing slow-motion, Peter Berg didn’t do anything terribly wrong, so that’s something, and Lone Survivor is destined to be above average purely on the grounds that a lot of what I watch is total crap.
I did feel there was an essential omission to the narrative, probably in the real life story as well. Who designs that goddamn radio and how is that our soldiers lives depend purely on that schizophrenic electronic device?