Peter Berg's "one from the heart" Navy SEAL film attempts to honor the men lost, but doesn't seem to have the slightest idea how to do so.
The opening of Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor is candid footage of a Navy SEAL bootcamp. Triumphant music by Explosions In The Sky soars over handheld shots of these soldiers undergoing harsh exercises and rituals that ostensibly build and rebuild the body and soul. Except that a funny thing happens somewhere along the way. The yells become more desperate. The soldiers start to crack, falling down, failing to complete activities, running short of breath. The instructors respond with a series of insults and assorted vulgarities meant to motivate these men to get up, to respond with passion and intensity. The expectation is that the music will darken, the mood will grow somber, and these practices will be revealed as the cruel exercises in assault and battery that they are. By the time the men are tied up and thrown under water, held down by weights, I wondered if anyone in this footage was interested in building soldiers who still had recognizable characteristics, and not suddenly-wild animals.
Of course, who can argue with results? You don’t talk about Lone Survivor by attacking the armed forces or their policies. But the fact remains that the footage that is shown is chilling, topped off by the soldiers being reunited with their families during a gala graduation. Are they coming back changed men? Have they had their inadequacies removed from their bodies and minds? Are they recognizable? You can’t hear anything they’re saying on account of the score, but this is meant to be a moment of triumph, of conquests achieved. It’s only when the title flickers over the sight of a barely-breathing soldier, beat into a hamburger, struggling to live as he’s taken out of a helicopter and carted off-screen that you realize that this must either be a film about our armed forces, or of the systematic destruction of them.
The quickie thought is to believe it’s the former, given aggressively expressive director Peter Berg previously “did time” making Battleship, a film that flattered the Navy while generously pandering to a mainstream audience that wasn’t interested. That $200 million behemoth was his “one for them” and most believe this was his “one for me,” a passion project based on the first-person accounts of Marcus Luttrell, the body being carried off at the beginning. Berg is done lionizing these troops as he did in Battleship: Now he wants to break them down completely.
The narrative follows a small battalion running a surveillance mission in the mountains of Afghanistan, tracking a lethal terrorist. Before their mission, we catch them at their base, waking up, exercising, and generally looking like movie stars. Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) and Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch) are the two alpha dogs, to Matt Axelson (Ben Foster) and Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch), and we are allowed moments when they discuss the economics of buying a horse, the joy of Coldplay concerts, and women. None of it is very interesting and all of it feels like placeholder talk. Did Berg realize he was making a slasher film? The young strapping bucks are alive and tossing around a football with youthful enthusiasm in a movie where we know there’s only one survivor from the title.
A series of very basic miscues puts them in hot water: They end up pointing their guns at a local villager whom they consider may or may not be a member of the Taliban, or even in league with the terrorists. They tie the man and his two younger compatriots to a tree before deciding what to do with them. It plays like schoolyard bickering when all parties know they’ll yield to their superior, Murphy. The decision is made to let the man go, but soon bullets are whizzing past their heads. And in some cases, into them. An extended gunfight erupts, with the Americans on one side and an onslaught of Taliban soldiers on the other. The numbers are not in their favor.
The bullets growl through the scenes, and the puncture wounds are notably real and grotesque. This is a film made by people who have gotten shot, and the sensation of these men taking a slug or two from an unending avalanche of artillery is disquieting, certainly not fun. Berg doesn’t seem to have a consistent vision here. In some cases, he layers on the violence and these soldiers end up leaping tall heights, busting out full runs, and taking a couple of hot slugs. In others, the soldiers use their pinpoint precision to take out enemies one by one with a series of single shots that maximize bullets and minimize fuss. Except the enemy goes down with one carefully-placed bullet, but the Americans’ squad are able to withstand an almost comical level of violence; a moment where they go flying down a hill plays a lot like an outtake from the same scene in Hot Rod. Honoring Luttrell’s story is one thing, but keeping in mind that these men aren’t actually bulletproof are welcome.
When in doubt, litter the movie with violence. A third act reveal involves the kindness of strangers, but because the film seems so dedicated to the violence, we never really understand these relationships that emerge. Any quiet moment is extended artificially, bound to be pulled back and snapped by wild gunfire. It’s no exaggeration to say that the movie often feels like sitting down and being shot at for two hours, which is something of a victory for limitless believability and gravitas. Removing all the qualifiers that come with such an idea, we’re left with a movie about the deaths of several real-life men that seeks to actively discomfort the audience. Why? What’s to gain?