Brutal, realistic, drama-documentary on the reality of war in Afghanistan.

Rating: 7/10 (7 February 2014)

This is a dramatization of a US mission to kill a Taliban activist in 2005, in which the four man team experience the extremes of warfare, and at the end there is a 'lone survivor'. Mixed in with this, is the experience of one of the team in a Pashtun village, where he is inexplicably sheltered from his Taliban pursuers. Can't elaborate any more without giving away some of the plot.
As a war movie, it's pretty accurate-looking, although many moments are distinctly 'Hollywoodized' (particularly one of the death scenes), and the movie makers love of glamorizing explosions is often present.
There is an excess of glib chat between soldiers - there would have been no harm to the accuracy of the movie in toning this down, it didn't tell me anything about the characters or plot. Mark Wahlberg's closing line, obviously something significant, was incomprehensible to me.
There's a lot of padding at the beginning and end of the movie, with shots of service personnel training and other matter, which was repetitive and didn't add to the product as a movie or documentary. Also a lot of slow-motion and intrusive music score, particularly in the earlier part of the movie.
So, a lot of criticism from me, but ... eight out of ten all the same, less one point because of the uneven production issues mentioned above. It's quite good, and leaves one thinking a little. Lone Survivor takes a step further than the much hyped Zero Dark Thirty, by recognizing the role of the people whose home actually is Afghanstan. This is done in a simplistic way, but then this is really a movie about soldiers doing their stuff, and how they cope (or don't) when things go wrong. Grim, but with a thankful message of hope in human nature by the end. Would have loved to have given it eight (although certainly not nine), but it's just a bit to ragged and uneven in places.