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domarzioneBottom line up top: brutal, but worth it.
I read Lone Survivor shortly after it came out. It's a Janus of a book: the first half is a funny, honest, informative, and proud explanation of what it takes to become a SEAL; the second half is the dreadful (as in full of dread), horrifying, blow-by-blow of a man watching his friends die as he himself is sure he will die, but somehow doesn't. The first half will make you laugh, the second half will make you cry.
I was... skeptical when they optioned it as a movie. Even for Peter Berg, who generally has his heart in the right place. Berg sold his soul to make this movie -- he directed Battleship to get this done -- and Mark Wahlberg's producing and starring in a role he's not really suited for, but is probably the real reason the film got made.
(He does fine, despite that he looks nothing like Marcus Luttrell, who dwarfs him. Taylor Kitsch is pretty eye-opening, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster are also very good.)
What I most wanted was for the film to be respectful, and it is. What it isn't is Marcus Luttrell's griefstricken and guilt-ridden eulogy for his friends, and you know what, that's fine. This is much closer to Black Hawk Down than, say, any of the other more mawkish tales of war based on true stories. There are no flashbacks to wives left behind, no angels sing, no one, as Luttrell himself joked in the post-film Q&A, falls in love with the village elder's daughter. There's a lot of gore (all of it the good guys'), there's a lot of bravery, and there is a the very firm statement that these men died -- and Operation Red Wings was a multi-phase tragedy of staggering proportion -- if not at the time of their choosing, then also not as victims. In that sense, it was very well done. It's perhaps more dramatization than drama, but it's a compelling one.
I read Lone Survivor shortly after it came out. It's a Janus of a book: the first half is a funny, honest, informative, and proud explanation of what it takes to become a SEAL; the second half is the dreadful (as in full of dread), horrifying, blow-by-blow of a man watching his friends die as he himself is sure he will die, but somehow doesn't. The first half will make you laugh, the second half will make you cry.
I was... skeptical when they optioned it as a movie. Even for Peter Berg, who generally has his heart in the right place. Berg sold his soul to make this movie -- he directed Battleship to get this done -- and Mark Wahlberg's producing and starring in a role he's not really suited for, but is probably the real reason the film got made.
(He does fine, despite that he looks nothing like Marcus Luttrell, who dwarfs him. Taylor Kitsch is pretty eye-opening, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster are also very good.)
What I most wanted was for the film to be respectful, and it is. What it isn't is Marcus Luttrell's griefstricken and guilt-ridden eulogy for his friends, and you know what, that's fine. This is much closer to Black Hawk Down than, say, any of the other more mawkish tales of war based on true stories. There are no flashbacks to wives left behind, no angels sing, no one, as Luttrell himself joked in the post-film Q&A, falls in love with the village elder's daughter. There's a lot of gore (all of it the good guys'), there's a lot of bravery, and there is a the very firm statement that these men died -- and Operation Red Wings was a multi-phase tragedy of staggering proportion -- if not at the time of their choosing, then also not as victims. In that sense, it was very well done. It's perhaps more dramatization than drama, but it's a compelling one.
