Pure intensity, action, death, and bravery

Rating: 7/10 (22 October 2014)

Lone Survivor (2013)
A more-or-less accurate depiction of four highly capable SEAL soldiers dropped into enemy territory in Afghanistan. They were then discovered and attacked by dozens of area Taliban. The recreation is riveting, disturbing in its intensity, and eye-opening. Whatever you feel about the war there, or even about soldiers killing other soldiers, you end up admiring the sheer abilities of these fit, smart, determined men.
And only one survives (this is told in the title). So you go into it knowing it will end badly, and also that one of them (probably Mark Wahlberg, the biggest name here) will make it. If the fighting, which makes up most of the movie in the center core of it, is seemingly endless, that's part of the point. But when it shifts to a local village near the end the tale has another kind of intensity, and a welcome change.
This is straight up action material. It lacks even the layers that other movies with similar settings add (see "The Hurt Locker" for one example). But in a way that makes this distinctive. It moves in linear fashion through time, through the events, and so you barrel along without mental complication to the end. It forces everything on the action, and the realistic portrayal of the unbelievable hardship and pain, and death, that comes along the way.
Check out the overly-long Wikipedia page on this movie for lots of facts about production, and about the liberties they took with the facts. Or just watch the movie knowing that there are the usual permitted changes that dramatization requires. Even as pure fiction the movie has enough kinetic and heroic acts to succeed on its own terms.