Movie Review for LONE SURVIVOR
LONE SURVIVOR (2013) Rated R -121 minutes
Based on the failed June 28, 2005 mission "Operation Red Wings". Four members of SEAL Team 10 were tasked with the mission to capture or kill notorious Taliban leader Ahmad Shahd. -
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch and Taylor Kitsch.
This movie starts out with actual Navy Seal training footage, and judging by the looks on the faces of these soldiers, just during the training, you can tell these soldiers are put through the ringer.
The movie doesn't take long to get started action-wise. Needless to say from the Spoilerific movie title. it's not going to have a happy ending.
I was enthralled by this movie way more than I was with "Zero Dark Thirty", which I found too slow and over hyped in my opinion.
The SEALS are there to take out a Taliban leader, who in the previous week had killed 20 US soldiers, when they are spotted by a farmer and his two sons. The soldiers discuss whether or not to let them go, risking them telling the Taliban in the town below about them, or just killing them and continuing with their mission. They try to do the right thing and let them go, thus sealing their fate. They abort the mission and wait to be picked up, moving to the top of a mountain to get a better radio signal.
For the next hour of the movie, it's pretty much a non-stop harrowing gunfight with 4 against a seemingly endless number of Taliban.
There are two scenes in this movie that are amazingly filmed, where the 4 soldiers have to jump down a mountainside to get away from Taliban soldiers closing in on them. The camera and stunt work for these two scenes are incredible. Using a handheld camera along side the soldiers as they tumble and fall to "safety" you see every painful hit of their bodies on every rock and tree that they slam into.
Mark Wahlberg and the other 3 leads do an excellent job, although it's somewhat bittersweet when you know pretty much that 3 of them aren't going to make it home.
Since Wahlberg is the star, it's not really a surprise he's going to be the guy to make it home to tell the world this story. How that happens I won't "spoil", even though it's been told in other reviews and of course, the book the movie is based on. I just don't want to give away the whole movie.
The movie wraps up with photos of all of the actual soldiers who lost their lives on this mission. Overall, I the thought the movie was very well done. I think it was a fitting tribute to all the men and women who serve this country.
No comments:
Post a Comment