Good Entertainment for Men, but a missed opportunity for a great movie

Rating: 4/10 (30 April 2014)

This movie has at least succeeded that I register at IMDb after many years to write a review.
I was a German Airborne Ranger (Fallschirmjäger) many years ago, so I now a little bit about being a soldier, although I have never seen combat.
This movie is acceptable as entertainment for men because most men love weapons and watching men killing each other. You get to see at lot of both.
It is based on a true story, but for me it is hard to believe that the movie comes anywhere close give an accurate picture to what really happened.
There is just too much cliché in this movie, and the SEALs just can absorb too much damage to their body to be credible, and the Taliban die too easy.
On the other hand, if you just try to ignore that, the movie probably shows a lot of truth:

a successful military operation that goes according to plan is the exception to the SNAFU rule

communication equipment in the military is sh*t and fails when you most need it

people who voluntarily join the military are not the sharpest knifes in the drawer

a well trained group of soldiers can inflict heavy casualties on numerically superior untrained troops

war sucks, but the sound of weapon fire makes up for it

In the movie the SEALs start taking hits too early and maneuver really bad. It is especially unbelievable that they would jump or fall down a slope they way shown in the movie.
There are also a number of factual errors in the movie.

In reality, the team was inserted by helicopter just 1.5 miles from the point of interest. In the movie it seems like they were moving at least ten or twenty miles through the mountains.

It is also not true that Taliban attacked the village where Lutrell was sheltered because they were way outnumbered by villagers. The town was Salar Ban and is only about 0.7 miles from the location of the fight. The old man who brought the note to the American base is factual, but he made most of the way by Taxi.

The number of Taliban opponents is also heavily disputed; the official number is 30-40, but there are reports that give numbers from 5 to 200. I would regard 10-30 as realistic because the Taliban did not dare to enter the village where Lutrell was sheltered.

It is true however that an Aghan named Mohammad Gulab Khan sheltered Lutrell and later received threats from the Taliban, so he and his family were relocated to Asadabad.
You have to take movie with a grain of salt, but if you want more than just entertainment out of this movie you have to to look through this movie and just ignore a substantial amount of cheesy stuff.