By JAKE KRING-SCHREIFELS
STAFF WRITER
A strange and powerful dissonance bookends Lone Survivor, director Peter Berg’s immersive and insular new war film. It begins with archival footage of Navy SEALs in training, pushed to all capacities of endurance, often falling out of consciousness and summoned back to life with commanders yelling things like, “Keep going!” The ending, after witnessing a mission gone wrong, calls upon another collage of images, this time of fallen Marines with their former wives and families. The smiles, the happiness and the innocence of those moments, as intended, hit you in the gut.
The title, of course, implies that things go terribly wrong and-they do. Lone Survivor is based on the memoir of Marcus Lutrell (played dutifully by Mark Wahlberg), the last surviving SEAL of Operation Red Wings, a 2005 mission enacted to terminate a Taliban leader in Afghanistan. On the U.S. compound, Lutrell’s three other teammates, Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Axe Axelson (Ben Foster) and Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) joke and retell old stories. The atmosphere is breezy but grounded by the impending operation. The orders are eventually given by their commander (Eric Bana), and the briefing allows everyone to spit military jargon.
The soldiers are helicoptered into the Afghan mountains, but before the team can establish their game plan, they experience an unexpected ethical choice. Three goat herders approach their path, ambiguous in their affiliations. This sparks crucial debate between the four SEALs, who weigh the options of releasing them, keeping them as prisoners or compromising them. The members are split and Murphy ultimately chooses to let them go. The decision will haunt and quickly engulf them into a chaotic firefight against a Taliban army.
Berg uses this scene to establish the tight fraternal bond between these four men, isolated in a wooded, cavernous labyrinth. The camera swerves to each of them in one motion as they determine their new plan. Pretty soon, caught in a barrage of bullets, the individuals become indecipherable, their faces painted with mud, sweat and blood. It is part of the circumstance, but it allows Berg to accentuate the men’s bond with each other, no one soldier above the other.
The intensity continues to pound in the midst of combat. The action is disorienting and visceral and Berg, along with cinematographer Tobias Schliessler, throw you right into the crosshairs of the scope. At multiple points the SEALs must jump off a cliff, and the camera follows their uncontrollable fall inches from their bruising bodies. The sound is also heightened; you feel every brush with death. In both the quiet and grenade-whistling calamity, the men’s gasping breaths dictate the tempo.
Once they have escaped the guerilla warfare and enter into the third act, specifically an anti-Taliban Pashtun village, Berg loses the chemistry. Luttrell finds aid from one of these villagers, and the final 20 minutes is about retrieving him from war. Once other players become involved in this mission and pacing finally downshifts, transnational questions arise. But, these will mostly occur after the credits end, because while you are in the moment, it is hard to get out.
