Lone Survivor

Plot synopsis:
In Afghanistan, Taliban leader Ahmad Shah is responsible for killing over twenty United States Marines, as well as villagers and refugees who were aiding American forces. In response to these killings, a United States Navy SEALs unit is ordered to execute a counter-insurgent mission to capture Shah. As part of the mission, a four-man SEAL reconnaissance and surveillance team is tasked with locating Shah. These four SEALs include team leader Michael P. "Murph" Murphy; snipers Marcus Luttrell and Matthew "Axe" Axelson; and communications specialist Danny Dietz.
The team is inserted into the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan, where they make a trek through the mountains. Here, they begin to encounter communications problems, which would play a critical role in the following events. Upon arriving at their designated location, the SEALs are accidentally discovered by an elderly shepherd and two teenage goat herders. Knowing that if they release them, the herders will likely alert Taliban to their presence, the team is split about whether to execute the herders or not. After a brief debate, Luttrell convinces the others that they will incite backlash if they kill the three herders. The team decides to release the herders and abort the mission, but before they can escape, they are discovered by Taliban forces. Although they manage to kill several Taliban soldiers, they find themselves heavily outnumbered and at a significant tactical disadvantage. Each of the men suffers serious injuries during the firefight, and in an attempt to flee from the insurgents, they jump off the edge of a precipitous ridge and into a large ravine.
Despite their injuries, the SEALs continue a defensive retreat through the steep woods. Dietz begins to lose consciousness and shouts questions to Luttrell, unwittingly revealing the team's position to the Taliban. Murphy and Axelson jump off another ridge to flee from the Taliban fighters. Luttrell tries to carry Dietz down the mountain, but Dietz is shot in the shoulder; the impact forces Luttrell to lose his grip and fall forward off the cliff. A dying Dietz remains at the top of the cliff and is killed by the Taliban insurgents. Murphy decides to try climbing back up the cliff to get a phone signal in order to call in support forces via satellite phone. Axelson and Luttrell shoot at the Taliban fighters to provide Murphy with cover. When he finally reaches higher ground, Murphy is able to alert the SEAL base of his team's location and request emergency assistance right before he is shot dead by Taliban fighters.
In response to Murphy's distress call, a quick reaction force team assembles, boards two CH-47 Chinook helicopters, and heads toward the location without fighter escort seeking to extract the remaining members of the reconnaissance and surveillance team. During an attempt to insert the arriving forces, the Taliban insurgents shoot down one of the helicopters, killing eight Navy SEALs and eight Special Operations aviators who were on board. The second helicopter is forced to turn back. After witnessing the attack, Luttrell and a badly injured Axelson are left behind. Axelson attempts to find cover, but is killed when he leaves his hiding spot to attack several approaching insurgents. When Luttrell is discovered by the Taliban, one of the insurgents fires a rocket-propelled grenade, and its impact causes him to land at the bottom of a rock crevice where he is able to hide from the Taliban fighters.
Luttrell stumbles upon a small body of water and submerges himself, only to find upon surfacing that a local Pashtun villager, Mohammad Gulab, has discovered his location. Gulab takes Luttrell into his care, returning to his village, where he attempts to hide Luttrell in his home. Gulab then sends a mountain man to the nearest American air base to alert military forces of Luttrell's location. The Taliban fighters arrive at the village to capture and kill Luttrell, but Gulab and the villagers intervene, threatening to kill the fighters if they harm Luttrell. The fighters leave, but later return to punish the villagers for protecting Luttrell. Gulab and his fellow militia are able to fend off several fighters during the ensuing attack. American forces, arriving via helicopters, shatter the advancing Taliban and, in the process, kill the bulk of the insurgents with concentrated weaponry fire. The American forces evacuate Luttrell back to base.
Photos of the real-life Marcus Luttrell, Mohammad Gulab and the fallen service members who died during the mission are shown during a four-minute montage, and an epilogue reveals that the Pashtun villagers agreed to help Luttrell as part of a traditional code of honor known as the Pashtunwali.

Tags: revenge, murder, violence, flashback

Review:
It forces everything on the action, and the realistic portrayal of the unbelievable hardship and pain, and death, that comes along the way.Check out the overly-long Wikipedia page on this movie for lots of facts about production, and about the liberties they took with the facts.
If you read the book and heard the interviews with the actual "lone survivor" you know that this movie got as close to the real events as possible.
Holy sh*t......You get so many action movies nowadays following familiar formulas that when you watch one of them you know that just when the good guy is about to get overcome by the enemy, the backup arrives and helps him.
Things do not go as planned.However, the quality of the cinematography, solid acting and good action is what makes this such a great film.Out of all the actors getting to play a part not one is bad.
"Lone Survivor" is good action movie, with some heroic stuff (they definitely couldn't avoid that...), and i know that it's based on real events, thats why i'm giving it 8, because many of things displayed in picture were sadly true, many, but definitely not all.
When someone is being killed in this movie (exept for bad guys from Taliban), it's shown in a similar way as Jim Caviezel aka.Jesus was suffering in "The Passion of the Christ" - only true American heroes die like that, not afghans who are more or less just a meat between bullets and Americans in this movie.Overall, i liked this action picture, the sound design and sound editing were really top notch (no wonder it got 2 Oscar nominations) - you can hear every detail in the forest, every breaking bone (ye, the fall from cliffs scene was gripping).
Raytheon should be annoyed that a movie about a mission failed primarily because of communication issues showed their red flashy brand on the comms equipment.I wanted the characters to succeed, to survive, but I could not ignore the fact that they were soldiers being there only to kill an enemy commander.
The actors also play well, although I like Mark Wahlberg in almost everything he does.The story, while showing the preparation, courage and resilience of four soldiers in enemy territory, also showed other things, like the logistical blunders that lead to stupid deaths, over-reliance on technology that doesn't really work as you expect and how choices have consequences on the ground that are beyond the ability of normal courts to understand, whether looking from the legal or moral angle.I liked a lot about the movie how it made you think long after it was over.
Lone Survivor- A Brutally Authentic and Nonpartisan Portrayal of the War Time Experience Told Through Peter Berg's Respectful Direction and Honest Screenplay.
Returning to his attention to detail roots showcased in The Kingdom and leaving behind an unfortunate deviation into the ridiculous with Battleship, Berg has concocted a relatively solid film in Lone Survivor that follows the real life events that happened in 2005 to Navy SEAL Mark Luttrell and his team in the Afghanistan Mountains when a secret operation is compromised.
First things first, all those other commercial movies have some learning to do , Although this might make some business, at least Peter Berg , justifies the characters with utmost respect .This movie makes you live the atrocious week in the life of Chosen SEAL members , You think along with them , when they have to make the toughest decision which will eventually decide whether they live / die.As Marcus mentioned in one of the interviews , Sitting in front of a screen , enjoying the pleasures of life, its easier to comment on what had to be done, But what these guys did, is just IMPOSSIBLE, F*** everything else, these guys are Real Heroes, I wish I could shake hands with Marcus just once in my lifetime, ( I am from India BTW ) , Do not miss this one , this movie moved me ..
Based on the nonfiction book of the same name & set during the War in Afghanistan, Lone Survivor tries to recreate the US Navy SEALs' Operation Red Wings, a failed mission in which a survey team of 4 soldiers were tasked to locate the Taliban leader, Ahmad Shah.
And even though it impresses in parts & has a lot in it to evoke the patriotic response from its target audience (which is American viewers obviously), Lone Survivor ends up going completely overboard in dramatizing the true events & suffers from the very clichés that most films of its genre find themselves trapped in.What's right with this film is Peter Berg's dynamic direction, tense atmosphere, superb pacing, intense battle sequences, precision use of sound, music & relatively fine performances from its star cast who were actually capable of delivering more than what ended up being in the final print.
What's wrong with it, however, is its lack of emotional depth or character development, sometimes going overly dramatic than required and too much reliance on action to push its story forward which ultimately crosses the fine line between exploration & exploitation to revel in the latter.On an overall scale, Lone Survivor has nothing new to offer compared to what other films of this genre have already given us so far.
The previous evening I had sat down and watching an intensely exciting movie - one actor, two bits of dialogue, but a thoroughly gripping hour and forty minutes - 'All is Lost' - but that's another (far better) story..
This film should be avoided until it's available on DVD for a fraction of the cost.Eight reasons why "Lone Survivor" should not have been made into a movie, based on violence dot com:Reason 1: Luttrell got his facts wrong.Marcus Luttrell exaggerated the importance of his target Ahmad Shah, totally misunderstood why the US went to Iraq & Afghanistan, and even over-estimated the number of fighters in the ambush.
How can you take seriously a movie based on a fictionalized war memoir after reading mistakes like these?Reason 2: The backlash could be gigantic.Remember the backlash from Soldiers against the Hurt Locker?
Lone Survivor doesn't come close to this level of honesty, and unfortunately this movie mirrors the SAME DISHONESTY that characterized Luttrell's horrible book.Reason 4: There were better stories.The battle of VPB Wanat.
Only lust for money could lead a director or a studio to validate and promote Luttrell's hate- filled propaganda.Reason 7: "Lone Survivor" the Movie corrupts and impedes political discourse - you won't "learn" anything from it (Except how to die)You can't call liberals evil, hold them responsible for the death of your friends, like Luttrell terrible book, and then have a courteous political discourse.
Letting partisan politics get in the way of serious security issues is disgusting (but apparently the American way).Reason 8: It will ruin the history of Afghanistan for years.Many Vietnam veterans don't like Vietnam war movies because the twisted reality they promote is often how most Americans who see them remember Vietnam.
But, as a film, Lone Survivor fails because: the plot heavily showcases the action scene, rather than focusing on 2 main things, characterization & the dot to dot fact file as to what went wrong.
Here, Wahlberg plays real life, lone survivor, Marcus somebody, part of anti terrorist squad, on a failed mission, due to bad radio connections, but more so a fatal one out of three decision, that soon sees the squad, outnumbered by the Taliban.
They do not defend their own country,they went to play GI Joe to another culture's homeland - and it has consequences.Although there are evil people in every country, this movie shows it like all the Americans are just friggin' awesome dancing around, training like hell, having fun team events, and generally being "cool", while all those bad-bad-stupid Arabic fighters should just die - as they hinder the Big Mission.
Afterwards, the American army sent hundreds of soldiers, right in the middle of a firefight amongst hundreds of Taliban fighters and the few villagers who are trying to protect him.The truth however is very different.The true depiction of events is that a US Chinook helicopter was shot down in Eastern Afghanistan while it was transporting a number of Navy Seals to the area.
It is similar to the film 'The Hurt Locker,' which was based on an overly exaggerated account of those soldiers who were part of failed missions, including missions such as Blackhawk Down, where hundreds of American soldiers were killed in Mogadishu and in addition to two of their helicopters shot down and tens of their armored vehicles were destroyed.While this movie and more of its types will sell well in the US and the Western world, in order to justify its inhumane war, it will not change the reality of the war in which the US is bleeding to death and the anger and outrage it continues to evoke in the Muslim world..
This film needed pretty boy Hollywood in it...no it did not.Real navy seals aren't pretty boys with stupid beards but trained professionals who do a dangerous role.It took me three attempts to watch this drivel and each time I tried not to think "cheap skate location budget " but it never worked...ever.I can't find any redeeming qualities on this film apart from the end which made me laugh..it wasn't supposed too I was just relived that I didn't,the have to watch it ever again..
all i can say is ts a pity IMDb doesn't have a 0/10 rating or i would have gave it that.the film really does make Rambo look realistic.i watched the film with 3 mates pretty much baked and even in that inebriated state did it make the film either believable or enjoyable.if war porn is your thing and your from the USA and suffer from a deluded form of patriotism then u might like it but for normal people its just too hard to swallow.As stated in other reviews how many falls off cliff faces and bullets can a person survive.if you want to watch a descent film about the US military watch "the boys in company C".This is one film to definitely avoid!!.
The movie will bring you up close and personal on the mountain with four Navy Seals and their ordeal with a Taliban ambush.This story could easily have been made into a PG-13 feel-good Hollywood blockbuster, but it would have been a disservice to the soldiers that died.
Peter Berg has to be praised for making the viewer feel for the character(s) during the action sequences.All actors have given great performances but eventually, it's Mark Wahlberg whose performance impressed me big time.
I will throw a bit out there, though; Totally lame hero dialog that never once strayed from the "Chuck Norris" formula, characters I never cared about for a moment (we're supposed to care that one of the guy's fiancé wants an expensive horse as a present??), enemy soldiers who just run up one and after another like complete dopes and get shot, US soldiers who somehow fall off cliffs at least three times and land on back- breaking rocks and get up and still run around, the sappy doe-eyed little boy and the "hero" local who saved him, and the list goes on and on.
This film LONE SURVIVOR based upon the true life account of a firefight in Afghanistan written by Marcus Luttrell might actually appeal to both sides but at the same time you can say it's guilty of having its cake and eating it .
Even if like me you are not from the United States you can not help but feel considerable sympathy as you watch a group of young men horrifically slaughtered as they take on an overwhelmingly larger enemy force.Whats really troubling about Lone Survivor is it stubbornly refuses to shed the jingoistic overtones that could have lifted this film above the raft of other US made war movies.
But it was Mark Wahlberg who excels the most as the last standing soldier (hence the title).MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT(S)The extended combat sequence between the four-man Navy SEALs team and an army of Taliban fighters.THE BAD STUFFIf there's any flaw in this movie, it's Eric Bana.
Instead, more time is devoted to combat sequences—which are admittedly well done—than to any sort of character development.Lone Survivor tells the true story of Marcus Luttrell, the sole survivor of a failed Navy SEAL mission, "Operation Red Wings" in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2008.
Instead, all we know of Marcus is his love for his fellow soldiers, and we can cheer him on as a leader and warrior.Berg (who directed and co-wrote) takes his time getting to the actual battle, which comes as the result of a bungled covert surveillance/capture-or-kill mission.
However, the film's first forty-five minutes or so are combat-free, and one would think Berg would invest this time into developing characters and making the audience really feel the sense that these men have something at home worth fighting for.
In other cases, Berg eschews the generally gritty look of the film for fog-filtered, picturesque, slow-motion deaths which come across as stagy and shallow.Lone Survivor is a well-made war movie, albeit one without a clear message.
Nonetheless, its actors turn in realistic performances in their depictions of soldiers (Ben Foster and Emile Hirsch are especially good) in a film that ultimately keeps its audience at arm's length from them, emotionally speaking.The most powerful aspects of Lone Survivor are its bookend montages of footage of the real SEALs involved in Operation Red Wings.
I know, Berg's reputation as a director isn't exactly stunning, but stay with me here...Lone Survivor is the adaptation of the book by Petty Officer First Class Marcus Luttrell, and is based on his true story of survival after "Operation Red Wings", a mission to take out a high ranking Taliban leader, goes awry.
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.
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.
there are lot of viewers, especially males, who just like to gobble up anything related to 'special forces', 'rangers', and 'navy seals' military movies but never watched them with 'reasonable doubts'.
of course the only good thing about this movie is not killing the goat herders and then they save the soldier's life but not enough time was pent on this..
Sometimes we get to see a movie, we think....well we have been here before...we may have even seen it all done before, oh so many times...then, oh yes dear reader, then we get into the action and the realisation that this is based on a true story, the actor Mark Wahlberg (Marcus) is in almost every film we have seen him in great (exception was Ted)..we don't often get to the tears stage nowadays...far too old and set in our ways for mostly any films, this one does test it all the way though....gripping action, fire fights,enemies never giving up, all the way right through to the end, as it is based on a true story you just wonder "WHY" what is life all about...anyway we both enjoyed this epic adventure, all the supporting actors do a splendid job, the special effects and general camera work via the director ( Peter Berg)makes this film one of the better ones to show the middle east conflict from the American side of things...WOW.
After watching this incredibly heart ripping, realistic War film based on a true story I was light headed, and literally wanted to kiss the American soil.
Since virtually all SEAL missions are classified, we never get to hear about the heroic actions of men like these that result in saving lives for their brother soldiers, as well as innocent civilians.The movie brought a tear to my eye, and made me reflect on the sacrifice so many have made for this country.
Movie Review: "Lone Survivor" (2013)This outstanding biopic war-movie directed by Peter Berg starring Mark Wahlberg as real-life military black operation (Black Op) in the mountains of Afghanistan surviving U.S. soldier Marcus Luttrell, delivers without overly-executed pyro-technical visual effects an deeply-emotional due to character close-up cinematography by Tobias A.
I highly recommend reading his book, its excellent.The story is based on Navy Seal, Marcus Luttrell's bestseller following himself and three others on a covert mission into the Afghan Mountains to locate a Taliban leader.
This movie is about the true story of Operation Red Wings, a military scout mission that turned into a massive firefight between four Navy SEALs and a small army of Taliban soldiers and the heroism the SEALs displayed during the battle.
I am not entirely certain that I would be happy that the film presents this particular branch of the U.S. military's special forces in a particularly good light.Based on a true story about a past Navy Seal mission in Afghanistan.
Anyway, the footage of the real soldiers was emotional but there are better movies out there that portray the Americans at war.