'Lone Survivor' shows Men Enduring the Savage consequences of choosing to do the right thing
If the training montage at the beginning of this film doesn’t have you saying “WTF,” there is something seriously wrong with you. Not only is the Navy SEAL training so intense that it makes professional athletes look like mere mortals, it is clear that they are among the baddest mofos on the planet. Not convinced about that last statement? Keep your eye in the movie screen.
Lone Survivor is frickin’ intense. (I would use another word, especially since I found myself thinking in those terms with the montage, but I’d like for my website to be PG.) The movie starts as it finishes, and with a title like Lone Survivor, there should be no suspense. However, the story that is told is one of mostly ordinary human beings who have turned themselves into something more through training. They are still ordinary, but they are capable of extraordinary actions. Based on the true story of “Operation Red Wings,” a failed attempt to kill a higher up in the Taliban, Lone Survivor stars Mark Wahlberg, Eric Bana, an unrecognizable Taylor Kitsch, and that one guy from The Hunger Games – not either of the main characters but one of the main bad guys, Alexander Ludwig. How many times can a man survive getting shot, falling down a mountain, a compound fracture, shrapnel from RPGs, and being chased through the Afghanistan mountains, which apparently have rattlesnakes? While there were certainly some liberties taken with what actually happened (no one can really know what happened to the soldiers who died while split from the main character unless they found the bodies), Marcus Luttrell’s own injuries can be established. While this focuses on the battle that four men were involved in because they chose to do the right thing rather than the smart thing, it also shows that not all Afghanis are involved in the Taliban. If it wasn’t for a town of Afghanis following Pashtunwalli and choosing to defend Luttrell at all costs, this story could have never been told. Luttrell cowrote Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10. Someone said that the film has been played to sports teams to inspire them to play well, any sports player who equates him- or herself to any of the men in this film has a right to do so. Not because the sports player is better than anyone else in the room, but because this is the type of film that should inspire everyone to be better at whatever it is they do. |
Check out Romney's Review of Lone Survivor
What wasn't real in the movie? An argument that made the men seem less heroic than they were. |