Lone Survivor, film review: 'A rare American film about Afghanistan to be a success'

Action sequences are brutal and very well choreographed

A scene from Afghan war film 'Lone Survivor'

Lone Survivor is a rarity - an American film about the war in Afghanistan that has actually been a hit. The film is a chronicle of failure – an account of a bungled Navy SEAL mission to assassinate a Taliban leader - and yet writer-director Berg somehow crafts a story of patriotic heroism against the odds.

His trick is to structure the film as if it’s on old fashioned western in which a cavalry patrol is ambushed and faces a desperate fight to stay alive.

There are a lot of stars and stripes on display. The soldiers here aren’t much interested in the politics behind the war. They’re loyal to one another and to Uncle Sam, fiercely competitive but fair minded. (They don’t shoot old men or children, even when doing so puts their own lives at risk.) The early sequence showing their ferocious training regime makes it clear that they have huge reserves of stamina.

Not a huge amount happens here. We see the soldiers preparing for their mission. Their commander (Eric Bana) gives them instructions about the Taliban commander they’re targeting and how they should make radio contact.

Once the mission has begun, four of the SEALs (Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster) are spotted on the mountain by goat herders. They have the chance to kill the goat herders. That, though, isn’t the American way. Soon, Taliban followers are hunting them down and their radio communications fail them at the vital moment.

As in Zulu, a small group of men hold out against overwhelming odds. As in Sam Peckinpah movies, there is a lot of slow motion violence.

The action sequences are brutal and very well choreographed. We see the men, desperate to stay alive, throwing themselves off precipices and bouncing down rocky cliff faces as the Taliban pursue them.

The four craggy jawed American actors bring a laconic humour to their roles, invariably finding wisecracks even at the most perilous moments. Soldiers die, helicopters are shot down. The operation seems disastrous and yet writer-director Peter Berg somehow strikes a triumphal note.

The end credits, over which we see photographs of the real soldiers whose stories are being dramatised here, are strangely moving. We finally realise that for all its John Wayne-like machismo, this isn’t just a story that the filmmakers made up.

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