The single, rolling engagement that occupies almost half the film’s run time is a punishing ordeal deftly handled by Berg, who shows off the knack for limited-vantage, running firefights he demonstrated in The Kingdom.īut as effective as the action is, it comes at the expense of personality. Based on Marcus Luttrell’s bestselling account of Operation Red Wings, Lone Survivor jettisons much of the book’s context, focusing on the mission itself. And if that weren’t enough, 20 minutes later it happens all over again.Īn ocean away from Battleship’s frothy action, Berg’s latest war film shows a very different face to armed conflict, demonstrating how even the best-laid plans fall apart in the face of sod’s immutable law. It’s an eye-watering sequence, one that leaves you as emotionally battered and broken as the men themselves (not to mention the stuntman who suffered three broken ribs and a punctured lung). The resulting 30-second descent makes you feel every crack, thud and crunch, as they collide with stumps and rocky outcrops before coming to a sudden arboreal stop. Hill, the four soldiers, fleeing incoming fire, hurl themselves over a rocky escarpment. In a scene that surpasses 2007’s Hot Rod as the definitive example of Man Vs. For a film with an hour-long firefight in which a quartet of Navy SEALs are shot, burned, blown up and impaled, it’s curious that the most brutal opponent in Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor turns out to be a tree.
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