Only one Seal survives a US mission to kill a Taliban leader

Rating: 8/10 (10 February 2014)

Peter Berg's Lone Survivor is a well-made — and even more certainly well earned — tribute to the US navy's Seals. In June 2005 four men were sent into Afghanistan undercover to kill Taliban leader Ahmad Shah. Their mission compromised by the accidental appearance of some goat-herds, the men try to leave but face a concentrated Taliban assault. As the title subtlety suggests, only one, Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) survives — and that only thanks to the valiant engagement by a town of Afghans who rate their ancient code of hospitality higher than the Taliban threat. The point is that primitive society may not have Our Culture but they have A Culture.
The arrival of the goatherds raises the Seals' crucial dilemma. Do they kill the unarmed civilians to preserve their mission or release them and flee? The scene is an important reminder of how complex a moral decision can become on the battlefield. Their decision may be right morally but it proves dead wrong strategically. For in these modern wars even children are soldiers, as the aged can be long-distance messengers.
The film is eloquent on the Seals' fraternity and tight bond. In the epigraph montage of the real Seals behind the story it's immensely satisfying to see that Luttrell named his son after his die-hard killed comrade, Axe.
The unforgiving harshness of the alien terrain is dramatized in the number of hard knocks the Seals suffer when they have to jump and roll to evade their assailants. After all his suffering on the desert and against hard rocks our survivor Seal is finally in his element when he tumbles into the waters of an oasis — where the villagers give him new life.
The graphic popping of blood confirms the film's visceral experience of modern gunfire. Where The Monuments Men (see my separate blog) seems based on old war films, Lone Survivor feels like the real, agonizing experience. It's loud and painfully disturbing — which should make it required viewing for the safe fat cats who so easily send their young men off to distant war. The film is also a timely reminder of what the nation owes its veterans — and how reprehensibly short their civilian treatment falls. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.