n Lone Survivor. Directed by Peter Berg. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Emile Hirsch, Taylor Kitsch and Ben Foster. Rating: 8 (out of 10)
Until recently, it stood as the worst casualties to U.S. soldiers since the Second World War.
The fate of SEAL Team 10 has been well documented by Marcus Luttrell in his best-selling book and on the speaking circuit, but Peter Berg's film further illuminates the brotherhood and sacrifice of a small group of men in Afghanistan.
The film focuses on a doomed mission; the lengthy passages about Navy SEAL training and camaraderie among the men in Luttrell's book is reduced to a series of harrowing documentary clips in the film's opening credits.
Then we're off to Afghanistan.
The men sleep with their weapons beside their pillows and photos of their kids on the wall, tough guys with soft insides (one man fusses about paint chips his wife has sent from back home). These guys go for morning sprints, not jogs, and moderation is for
wimps - so acknowledges the unofficial SEAL creed recited by a newbie (Vancouver's Alexander Ludwig). Meanwhile the men fight off "those dark corners, where the bad things live."
Four men get ready for a mission to take out Taliban commander Ahmad Shah. Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch) will be the lead man on the ground, Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) is the medic, Matthew "Axe" Axelson (Ben Foster) is a navigation specialist and sniper, and Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) is communications officer.
It's an operation where the SEALs expected to encounter 10 guys, and instead got an army. There's early talk that their mission is cursed. It's not cursed, insists Luttrell, "It's just Afghanistan, that's all." Then the foursome encounters an old man and two teens herding goats and are faced with three choices: tie the Afghans up and leave them to die of exposure; let them go, incurring an imminent threat from the Taliban; or betray the rules of engagement protecting unarmed civilians and shoot them, eliminating the threat. "It's nobody's business what we do up here," reasons Dietz.
After the op is compromised, it's a race against the enemy: the goatherder downhill to alert the Taliban, and the SEALs to higher ground, to try to get their communications working and plead for an airlift out.
It's tense, with every snapping twig branch resonating. The sound in general is great: there's a surprising range of pops and ammo sounds. Up-closeand-personal camerawork follows the guys into trees, down the barrels of their weapons, and down cliffs.
Stunts are punishing: there's not one but two impossibly graphic tumbles down a mountain. And this isn't your average firefight: the men are each shot several times and, well, soldier on with the mantra "never end the fight." Luttrell crawls for miles despite a broken back, broken pelvis, facial fractures, a torn shoulder and several bullet wounds.
The events that follow are tragic and inspirational in turn. Peter Berg (director of such testosterone-laden fare as Battleship and Friday Night Lights) crafts a wonderful story about brotherhood: of Luttrell and his fellow SEALs, and of the enduring relationship between Luttrell and his Afghan savior, Gulab (Ali Suliman). It's a nice balance of American chest-thumping and an indebtedness to the Afghan tradition of "Pashtunwali," an honour code pre-dating Islam whereby men are obliged to give asylum to outsiders.
Overall an emotional and gripping story about humanity and self-sacrifice, both by the soldiers of Operation Red Wings who perished and by a man who took an incredible risk to protect a stranger.
