Lone Survivor

Bullseyes:  ④ (out of 5)

Yet another ‘based on a true story’ Navy Seal escapade. Huh.  How many of these can there be? I wonder. I just finished watched Zero Dark Thirty. Aren’t these army operations supposed to be ‘covert’? No wonder the terrorists are so effective.

‘Ve have to get into ze pentagon mein Kapitan’ (I don’t know why the terrorists have German accents…it’s must be a WWII thing)

‘How vill ve do zis Helmut?’

‘I think I have an old movie somevere’

‘Great put it on’

‘Yavol. God is good’

‘Vat?’

Lone Survivor is a gory, shaky cam, POV style war caper. It’s as close as you can get – or as close as I’ve ever gotten – to being inside a soldier’s helmet. And after seeing this I know that inside a soldier’s helmet is no place I’d ever want to be.

Danny Walberg and his cohorts get dumped into the backwaters of Afghanistan (are there any other type of waters in Afghanistan?), exposed by a bunch of goat herders (why is it always goat herders?) and shot to pieces by the local Taliban. That’s the plot basically, but, ‘shot to pieces’ doesn’t quite cover what you experience on the screen. Yikes. This is one movie you wouldn’t want to see in 3D IMAX. You literally see these poor sods getting plugged to death. It’s gruesome.

Of course Marky Mark survives but there is no stirring soundtrack or feel good finale. You leave the cinema with the same sense of hopelessness that all modern era war movies seem to leave you with. Which makes you wonder – why do we keep making all these wars if they never have any happy endings? John Wayne would never have signed up for any of this.