Afghan Attack

Rating: 5/10 (4 May 2014)

Peter Berg seems to be trying to hard to imitate Michael Bay. Whereas Battleship was effectively a Bay version of a film based on a toy, here we see the same type of bombastic and patriotic tones that Bay likes to indulge in.
Based on true events, Lone Survivor follows Marks Wahlberg and his Navy SEAL team try to hunt down a Taliban Leader. However they encounter some goat herders and decide whether to kill them or not. However these scene itself causes discomfort as the herders are civilians and therefore killing them is in breach of the Geneva convention, yet the film wants to enter a debate on war ethics. These are professional soldiers, surely this was mentioned in their training? Hold on it was mentioned in the mission briefing a few minutes earlier!
As they have to abort the mission the SEALs encounter the Taliban forces and get involved in a brutal and visceral gunfight in the wild Afghan terrain which suspiciously looks like somewhere in America.
Mark Walhberg, Ben Foster and Taylor Kitsch give strong performances but the film although starts off slowly then becomes scenes of constant blood-soaked fighting and running or more accurately falling down the mountain from the Taliban.
There is an element of war porn in this film with the prolonged battle scenes as the SEALs are repeatedly getting shot. It starts as soldiers goofing around but once the action begins there is an emphasis of a band of brothers but there is something hollow about this film even with the latter storyline of getting help from Pushtun villagers does not overcome.