Lone Survivor

With Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, EBooks, YouTube, and whatever else you can think of that’s available to our generation, everyone thinks that they have a story to tell and that the entire world needs to hear it. So we’re stuck reading senseless long posts about how their milk shakes used to be made with half and half but now it’s made with 2 percent. Or you forced to see 8 million pictures of their babies and how they look just like their grandparents did when they spit up their first Gerber porridge! Do you honestly think that people care about this crap? Don’t get me wrong, I am more self aware than you realize; I know that most of my posts are about drunken encounters with random hipsters and that within itself isn’t that impressive, but at least I sandwich these stories in between discussions about movies and music. If you’re going to tell me stories about 2 percent milk shakes at least tell me it was used to wash out the sour taste of Ryan Gosling’s spunk! That would at least give you the same level of respect from me that I gave the little monkey I saw riding a dog on YouTube the other day.

But it seems like our society rewards this type of inane behavior. Somehow someone at HBO gave a green light to season 3 of Girls and we were forced to watch Lena Dunham go on an exciting road trip that included wonderful events like stops at a diner that didn’t serve turkey bacon, adults playing a lame game of truth or dare, and spontaneous hikes in the woods. Clearly stimulating stuff, but the sad thing is, I will be front and center for next week’s show. Maybe I should be shot like everyone else! Well thankfully this past weekend treated us to a movie that featured a group of soldiers whose story really should have been told.

Lone Survivor is the story of 4 Navy Seals who are given the task to take out a deadly Taliban leader who has killed multiple Marines and who terrorizes local villages with random be headings. While on their mission, they camp out outside of the village waiting for the proper time to strike when they are discovered by a local goat herder and his two sons. They face the dilemma of letting them go and giving away their position which would surely get them killed or killing the man and his two sons so they can complete the mission but have the murder of two children on their conscience for the rest of their lives. Well they make what most would agree (myself included) to be the right call and from that point on, they are in a fight for their lives.

Peter Berg directs this film and it’s good to see the dorky white kid from The Great White Hype actually learning how to make good action movies. Most of his earlier films have quite a few hammy moments in them but with the exception of Battleship, he’s toned it down quite a bit since then; especially when he’s dealing with events that happen in the Middle East like his 2007 effort The Kingdom. Even though I have never actually been in one, his gun fights seem to be as close to the real thing as possible. There’s no ridiculous over the top stunts, no cheesy one liners (although I actually love those), and in every instance it looks like shooting someone or being shot at is one of the worst possible things that could ever happen to a human being. This movie is no different in that the second the Taliban discovers the Seals’ position, one of the most graphic, bloody, and painful fighting scenes takes place. And everything you see is based off of the account of the lone survivor Marcus Luttrell.

He starts off the movie by showing you the intense and borderline sadistic training the Seals are put through; and the point of all this training is to teach them how to mentally push their bodies to a point further than they could ever imagine. This helps explain how they were able to get shot and endure the intense pain of throwing themselves off of steep and rugged cliffs as they were in a fight for their lives. With each shot, cut, or fall the soldiers experienced, you could hear everyone in the audience openly groan as Berg does an incredible job of making you feel like you are actually taking the fall with them. While the number of head shots and the amount of blood you see is plentiful, its not exactly Hostel part 3. So the faint of heart should be able to make it through this movie. If for nothing else, see it to cheer towards the end when Luttrell is near death and tells a little Afghani kid that he’s from Texas. I am not as big on the Texas pride as some are but even I must admit that that moment made me proud.

The courage, strength, and sacrifice these men displayed is definitely a story worth telling and its something worth you devoting your time to. Now just because it’s a great story doesn’t necessarily mean that it will also make a great movie but in this case Marky Mark, Taylor Kitsch, and my favorite Ben Foster do an awesome job of portraying these men and presenting them as real life heroes and not (as my friend would say) Arnolds and Stallones running around like cartoon characters. I’m not one to get caught up in hyperbole, so I will wait a few years before ranking it among other war movies but as of now I give it a rating of FRESH!