Masterful movie making -- Ignore the critics

Rating: 8/10 (24 January 2014)

Why do so many of the "professional" critics forget this is an adaptation of a book? It is supposed to be emotionally one sided, because that is what was written by the author. He wrote what HE WENT THROUGH, not the enemy. Critics complain when a movie goes too far outside the lines of truthful events, now many of them are complaining because the movie focuses on what actually happened out there? Artistic license was taken in the setup as well as the final act. The battle was what it was. The movie was never meant to be 2 sided or politically thought provoking. Why is that wrong? Many of these same people loved the mindless, silly plotted "Gravity" because of it's technical achievement, but they rip "Lone Survivor" for sticking to it's accurate guns? As more liberal-minded person myself, I am appalled by critics who CLEARLY allow their own politics to cloud their rating.
As a technical achievement, "Lone Survivor" succeeds. That said, it does fail a bit in the 1st and 3rd acts, plus it fudges a huge fact regarding the goat herders.
Making 2 hour movies out of a non-fiction book, while trying to build characters, is tricky. In this case, I believe too much time was spent up front creating the characters, while too little focus was given to the ending, which stretched about 5 days in real life. The movie shows it as an overnight and gets a bit gimmicky in spots, as it tries to tie it up. I feel the days in captivity and the efforts that the tribe and US forces went through were marginalized and that was a shame. Character creation could have been done in more efficient fashion as they were moving out, IMO.
The MAJOR fact fudge regarding the goat herders was that, in real life, they had no idea if they were Taliban or not. The movie made it clear they were, when in fact they just didn't know. That is why they made their decision. The movie needed to be more precise with that scene.
All that aside, your hands will sweat and you will be captivated by what you see. The performances were uniformly solid, save for maybe Eric Bana, who does little. It is a must-see movie and a worthwhile read. I'd recommend the book first.