Expecting a top shelf war movie and what I got was an undeveloped standard Hollywood action movie

Rating: 4/10 (21 February 2015)

I have watched a few modern war films and I have been waiting to see this since it finished it's theatrical run and it didn't deliver as much as I thought it would. Mark Wahlberg stars as Marcus Luttrell who is part of a four man Navy SEAL's team also consisting of Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) and Matthew Axelson (Ben Foster). deployed into the Hindu Kush region in Afghanistan to capture or kill Ahmad Shah, who is a local Taliban leader. I mentioned at the start of this review that the film didn't deliver and in my opinion, here's why. It started off looking like it had the hallmarks of a great war movie along the lines of Platoon or Saving Private Ryan but instead descended into your standard Hollywood action movie which is kind of funny considering Mark Wahlberg is your go to action movie star these days. Secondly, most of the cast, except say Ben Foster don't get their chance to shine or let their chances slip away from an acting perspective and most of them at one stage commit one of the cardinal sins of acting, murmuring and mumbling their lines which is a big no-no. Thirdly, because of the acting mentioned in the previous sentence, I found it hard to make a connection to the characters, probably due to below average screen writing which didn't delve deep enough into what makes the characters who they are. And probably last but not least, parts of the movie are quite over the top but I guess you can kind of expect it with movies like this and at one stage made me think one thing, was Michael Bay directing this?