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There was a moment in Peter Berg's Lone Survivor that made me angry - angry enough that I considered leaving the screening. For all of Berg's talk during the Q&A that followed about him actively attempting to side-step any video-game-esque sense to the violence out of respect for the very real fallen soldiers the film's telling the story of, at the start of the shoot-out that serves as the film's entire middle section he chose to film a bunch of it like something straight out of a racist version of Duck Hunt - a brown person in a head-scarf pops up and we watch them pop with blood through the scope of whichever heroic character's getting the points for that one.
Up until then we've spent the first third of the film getting to know the American soldiers, played by a fine group of recognizable faces - Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, and Taylor Kitsch are our central quartet... and, well, there's not a single face of color around. So at that point, it just felt gross. The faceless scourge of Others getting picked off while the Texas boys express their indifference between "Arabian" and "Arabic" horses. There's just dropping us into the there and then of the characters, that's well and good, but the film is sloppy with its attitude towards killing.
That said, without getting too spoilery (I didn't know the true story going in) the film's last act rights some of the problematic wrongs, and brings into focus why this story, out of all the stories of our fallen soldiers, was worth being told. What briefly felt like propaganda did have a couple of aces up its sleeve. The art of it is a little awkward though - while the film's well acted (Emile Hirsch is especially terrific) and well shot (the action is bone-breakingly palpable at times), the murkiness of its intentions aside there's a slickness to it that's incongruous and I'm not sure serves it. Save that early anger, which I don't think Berg intended to spur, I never really felt all that challenged by the film. It took me backwards ten steps just to catch me back up by the end.
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4 comments:
"Emile Hirsch is especially terrific"
SOLD. I miss him in movies.
Anderson Cooper interviewed the actual Marcus Luttrell on 60 Minutes this evening. It was a very good segment about a man who is haunted by the events told in the movie. You ought to go online and watch it and tell us if the movie does any justice to the truth. BTW, not once did I hear Marky Mark's name...
The movie is more about what kind of people it takes to do incredibly difficult jobs. These guys are by no means ordinary individuals. They do things that no one else could or would want to do. And they are as we saw in the 60 minutes piece not immune to survivor guilt. Personally I think the movie respects the truth of what happened and honors the individuals who perished. I consider myself non-violent, but war is complicated in ways that I can't grasp. I can't imagine being one of these guys and this movie lets you walk in their shoes.
Scot - Luttrell was there at the screening I attended and did a Q&A with Berg and Wahlberg; he's obviously a pretty damaged man, physically and psychically, but listening to him speak was incredibly moving.
anon - I think that's the ideal of what the movie wants to be, and I think it approaches it often, but I do think it misses the mark a few times.
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