Lone Survivor: well used formula

Rating: 5/10 (9 January 2014)

War movies are a staple of the cinematic art. The ones made during a war are usually quite different from the ones made after the same war.
When I was a kid I had a broad array of war movies to watch, mostly about World War 2, with the ones made during mostly patriotic efforts to rev up the folks at home and the ones made after mostly dramatic offerings of regrets along with a group of massive, star studded epics that were rah rah rah.
And, those were for movies about a war we clearly won, fought during a very simple time when communication was often delayed and filtered and content as we knew it was subject to the mores of society almost always.
So, here we are in the age of total communication, no filter necessary, during a war we are probably about to just walk away from without a discernible 'win'. In addition, if current polling is accurate, a war the public is not only fatigued with but anxious to end.
Yet, Lone Survivor is being called the best thing since Saving Private Ryan. Apparently, there still is a filter when it comes to warm films made during a war. And, there clearly is humor in some marketing for this film.
To present his story, in the above-mentioned atmosphere, Mr. Berg has chosen to go the formulaic route used by many other directors during World War 2. In the setup we get to know a bit about the characters before they go to battle, then during the battle have that point of reference as they suffer their fates, and at the end all the schmaltz one expects when the formula is in use.
But like I said, this is a movie about a war we are still fighting. You only need to look at the avalanche of horrible reviews for 'the Green Zone' a few years ago to see the hazards of not adhering to the formula. I believe that Mr. Greengrass made a much better war movie in his effort, but by straying from the cheerleader formula that Mr. Berg uses here he got trampled under the feet of the inertia that goes along with adherence to formula.
Yet, I consider the Green Zone a pretty great movie and Lone Survivor only a good movie. Be careful when you run up against some other person's idea of patriotism, religion or culinary arts.
It's too bad that Mr. Berg didn't use a truly great movie for a point of reference. Imagine if he had used the formula in Tay Garnett's 'Bataan'. Or, maybe Zoltan Korda's 'Sahara'.
I have no doubt that soon after this war is over we will see movies that do a better job of expressing the despair and pointlessness of Afghanistan, but not now and not from Mr. Berg.