Sunday 1 June 2014

Lone Survivor - Phil's Five Words for Films

Lone Survivor stars Mark Wahlberg as one of four Navy SEALs on a secret mission to hunt down and kill a Taliban leader in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan. Also starring Taylor Kitsch, Eric Bana, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster it is as brutal and uncompromising as its setting and title suggests. The main body of the film is centred around a fire-fight with enemy soldiers after the SEALs are ambushed and is extremely in your face. The battle scenes are up-close, loud and crunching - the stunt work, battle-injury special effects and 'sounds' being the stand out features of the film for me. The intensity of the situation doesn't let up and watching the film is a bit like being pushed down a steep hill in a metal barrel whilst people shoot at you with live bullets ( I imagine ) - you know you can't stop, it's loud, disorientating and someone is going to get hurt. There is one major fault/plot point that annoyed me about the story ( surely a third option for the compromised situation? - email me ) but other than that, it is a very well made, solid, visceral piece of film making that will leave you feeling that you have been as close to that fight as you ever could whilst just watching a screen. There is a lot of brute strength, bare-American chest thumping, courage and a large sense of pointless waste but this bullet-whizzing-splatter-shatter-fest is very effective at pinning you down and beating you in to submission. Unsophisticated, flawed war film that packs a punch. Yeeehhaaawwww!

7.5 out of 10.
Cert 15 ( uk ) 2013.
124mins

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