Not too many directors are bold enough to spoil their movie in the title. Not too many directors are also not bold enough to make Battleship so this movie could be made. Peter Berg directed a board game movie so he could bring the tale of Marcus Luttrell to the big screen with tense immersive results. Lone Survivor is a movie of highs and lows; at its best, it has some scenes that are as tense and terrifying as any war movie. At its worst, Lone Survivor plays out like a military propaganda film when it could be using its story to point out flaws in the planning of this ill-fated mission. Overall, Lone Survivor is compelling lip service to those hard-working machine-like marines that perform any mission regardless when called upon.
Lone Survivor adapts the story of Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), the sole survivor of “Operation Red Wings.” Instructed to eliminate a high-ranking Taliban officer, a team of 4 is sent in for reconnaissance of the town he would be in between the Afghani mountains: Commander Mike Murphy (Taylor Kitsch, also the star of Battleship), Comms officer Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch), Sniper Matt ‘Axe’ Axelson (Ben Foster) and Luttrell. The first half of the mission goes fine, but then Murphy’s Law hits: the communications hit a dead zone; goat herders find their hiding spot; their air support separates. As a result, the four are left to fight off the Taliban militia that knows where they are using the skills they learned in training.
When focused upon the four men in peril, Lone Survivor is replete with tension and terrifying moments. Not all the tension is from combat: the scene where the group decides what to do with the herders is brilliantly directed and explored. Once the gunfight starts, director Peter Berg decides to place the camera (a la Saving Private Ryan) in the midst of his fighters. This move is a success, when they advance and retreat, unless you are trained to handle the chaos, the audience has a hard time seeing what commander Murphy sees. I’ve never seen falling down a cliff captured as well on film as in Lone Survivor: the quick edits disorient you as much as the men must have been disoriented. Although sometimes these men appear to have superpowers, the fighting in Lone Survivor mostly comes off realistic, making each bullet/piece of shrapnel/broken bone that a character receives hurt just as much for an audience member.
What keeps Lone Survivor from the war movie stratosphere is not involving the behind the scenes team members correctly. The movie chooses to focus on Petty Officer Patton (Alexander Ludwig) and Lieutenant Kristiensen (Eric Bana) since they feature prominently in the middle of the rescue. However, that leaves little time to make them look like characters; they just do what is necessary of the plot and that’s it. Instead (a la United 93) Lone Survivor could have had them run into issues with the military command and force them to make brash decisions to try to save the team or not save the team. Such decisions give depth to the characters that is sorely needed but never arrives.
The acting is solid but mostly unspectacular. Wahlberg holds the movie together as the survivor, getting most of his acting done in the third act. Taylor Kitsch gets some nice moments during the battles as the commander. Ben Foster and Emile Hirsch are fine but unspectacular, and Eric Bana and Alexander Ludwig are wasted and semi-pointless. Luttrell himself makes a cameo that has more resonance than anything Bana does.
For the families of the people involved, I’m glad Lone Survivor exists. It shows the heroic actions of brave men put in a position to fail and almost succeeding. However it does not get enough character development to be a truly transcendent war film. Marcus Luttrell can rest knowing that his story and friends will be seen as heroes, but I’m not so sure that is the only message we should be receiving.