If it had maybe one more burnished shot of men training at sunset, Lone Survivor would be the perfect Navy SEALs recruitment video. From the rah-rah dialogue to the fetishized weaponry to the noble, slow-motion deaths, nearly every moment is geared to mythologize the military experience. Such ritualistic fawning makes for a thin cinematic experience, irrespective of how you feel about the military. Adapted from a book by former SEAL Marcus Luttrell and directed by Peter Berg (The Kingdom), Lone Survivor dramatizes a failed 2005 mission to capture a Taliban leader in Afghanistan. After a training-montage credit sequence and some rough character-sketching at base camp, the movie puts us on the ground with four SEALs, played by Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster. There’s a brief moral dilemma when the operation is blown by passing shepherds, but mostly this devolves into target practice, the self-treatment of horrible wounds and sacrificial gestures. I know, I know, it’s “based on a true story.” But as it’s told here, that story plays like 300 for the war in Afghanistan.
