Ryan McNeil
Several years ago, audiences steered clear of reminders of the wars we were involved in. No matter how well they were made, or the stories they wanted to tell, moviegoers seemed loathe to embrace reminders of the level of unrest going on in our world. However, as those conflicts slowly ramp down it would seem as though we are ready to look up at that big glowing screen and think about what we’ve done.
Whether or not filmmakers want to remind us with tact and honour remains to be seen.
LONE SURVIVOR is based on the events of Operation Red Wings, a mission in Afghanistan in June of 2005. During that operation, four NAVY SEALs are dispatched into the mountainside to identify, capture, and kill a high-ranking member of The Taliban. The SEAL team is made up of LT Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), GM2 Dietz (EMile Hirsch), ST2 Axelson (Ben Foster) and HM Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg).
Shortly after the SEALs reach their base of operations, they are literally tripped over by three Afghani goat herders. The unexpected guests are clearly working with The Taliban, so the SEALs have to make a decision and make it fast. The decision they make is a bad one, and it brings a vast number of Taliban fighters up the mountain and into a firefight with the four American soldiers.
Outmanned, outgunned, and out of range for communications, the SEALs are no longer out to achieve their mission. Instead, they now have to rely on everything they’ve been taught just to survive the day.
The fundamental difficulty with a film like LONE SURVIVOR is that it blurs the lines between recent historical fact, and stylized entertainment. That might not seem like a difficulty, except that it makes critiquing the latter without seemingly commenting on the former tricky. One could suggest that the alternative is to create only documentaries about mission like the one we see in this film, but even documentaries are subject to the editorial whims of their creators’ beliefs. So no matter which way a filmmaker chooses to recount the tale – using fiction or nonfiction – stylized flourishes are bound to enter the mix. Those flourishes sometimes work, and sometimes don’t.
So before we move forward, allow me to be perfectly clear: What I feel about these men or their mission is irrelevant. What is up for discussion is the “based on true events” film that I have just watched…and that film is deeply flawed.
The story of Operation Red Wings is both tragic and incredible. It’s tragic that the SEALs didn’t make a better choice that might have given them a better chance at survival, but it’s incredible that they were able to engage with that many enemy combatants for that long. Even more incredible is that they were able to hold their own even after giving up a position of advantage. However, the style in which director Peter Berg chooses to tell that story does not set out to honour those involved so much as it sets out to entertain and emotionally manipulate us. Time and again, the action is slowed down to slow-motion to up the impact. When it isn’t, it is underscored with weeping trumpets and solemn drums of war. The film doesn;t trust us enough to be emotionally affected by the fate of these soldiers, it has to smack us over the head with their tragedy then look us squarely in the eye and ask “Get it? This was sad.”
What’s equally unfortunate is the liberties the film chooses to take with the action once the firefight begins. To be clear, I’m not talking about dramatic liberties the film chooses to make – such as the allegations that it dramatically increased the amount of Taliban fighters the SEALs engaged. Those sorts of liberties are par for the course when it comes to adapting. No, the sorts of liberties that bother me most are the leaps in physics. So desperate is the film to show off and inspire us, that it sends the SEALS wildly sliding down the edge of a mountainside twice. In each instance, the SEALs hit ground, stones, and trees in ways that should leave them completely crippled or even dead. Yet, when they come to a stand-still, up they get.
We live in an information age – an age where embedded journalists and documentarians have shown us what men like these endure and what they succumb to. The soldiers of Operation Red Wings, survived what they did through training, fitness, and luck. However, if we are to believe this film, they also survived because they are superhuman cartoons that are able to take direct impacts to the head with no adverse effect.
There are whole books from film history filled with movie after movie about various wars. They have said all sorts of things in all sorts of ways, about all sorts of men from all sorts of days. They’ve told us that war is hell, war is a drug, war is valorous, war is cowardice. They’ve told us that wars are fought for the right reasons, the wrong reasons, seldom by the men who want power and more often by the men those men have the power to dispatch. What makes the best of them stand out, and what will add to the canon moving forward, are the films that are less interested in trying to say something new, and instead say something about the men and women central to their story. Of the four SEALs at the centre of LONE SURVIVOR, I only know that and LT Murphy is getting married soon and HM Luttrell is interested in one of the bridesmaids.
If we don’t get to know any of the soldiers, what are we supposed to care about whether they live or die. Hundreds of soldiers have spent the last twelve years putting their lives on the lines in situations just like this. The advantage of a dramatic Hollywood film is to use various filmmaking techniques to make us care. This film chooses not to, which means that unfortunately we don’t – at least no more than we already would.
Coming away from LONE SURVIVOR, one is reminded of the flag-waving rah-rah films of men like Tony Scott, Michael Bay, and Jerry Bruckheimer. The films that they gave us a generation ago were one part entertainment, one part recruiting ad. They were handed over to us during an era that was primarily peaceful for North Americans, and seemed suited for their times. However, that time has passed. We now live in an age of great conflict and great personal cost. The lives lost on both sides of the battle lines are far too great in number to be retold in the same old flag-waving manner.
We live in a new age, with new soldiers fighting new types of war, and dying for new reasons. They deserve to have their story told in a new way.