Peter Berg's depiction of a botched Afghan war mission has upset critics left and right. But whatever its politics, there's no denying its impact
Boy, has the surprise-hit war movie Lone Survivor got 'em up in arms. On the left and on the right, it's the political football of the week. Salon's Andrew O'Hehir (I'm a fan) called it "a jingoistic, pornographic piece of war propaganda", while Amy Nicholson of LA Weekly called it "a jingoistic snuff film". I found their remarks a little ripe, if mostly well argued, although Nicholson's characterisation of the characters' default mindset as "Brown people bad, American people good" rather misses the obvious retort: "They wanna kill me, I wanna live." But I felt a little differently after roly-poly multimillionaire Glenn Beck (and which branch of the military did he serve in?) started tearing strips off Nicholson in an egregiously bumptious and sexist fashion.
Director Peter Berg – whose Texas-based high-school football movie Friday Night Lights, and the sublime TV show it spawned, demonstrated his talent for attracting the lucrative Red State audience without alienating too many Dems – has disavowed any political motives in telling this story of a catastrophically bloody, failed patrol in the Afghan highlands in which 19 Navy SEALs died. There's hardly an audience left that supports the war in Afghanistan anyway, and I've never had any sense that Berg was a rightie. I'll accept his disavowal even though I agree with O'Hehir that it, too, is a political act. I'm tired of arguing about the stupid, unnecessary Afghan war, though. Right now I fancy a good platoon movie.
Because that's what Lone Survivor really is: it fits in a long and honourable tradition that stretches through American (and world) cinema like a bloody thread, from Sands Of Iwo Jima, The Story Of GI Joe and A Walk In The Sun through Anthony Mann's Men In War and numerous Sam Fuller movies to Oliver Stone's Platoon, Saving Private Ryan and Alan Clarke's Contact. Lone Survivor is decidedly not The Green Berets, John Wayne's second feature as a director from 1968, deluded and lachrymose propaganda for a war that a majority of Americans by then already wanted to be over. At the same time, Lone Survivor also sits comfortably alongside this season's bumper crop of terrifying-ordeal narratives, Gravity, 12 Years A Slave and All Is Lost.
Give Peter Berg some credit: he has fashioned a truly gripping and upsetting movie about close-quarters combat, anchored by his solid central quartet of SEALs (Mark Wahlberg, Emile Hirsch, Taylor Kitsch and Ben Foster) in admittedly underwritten roles. That's enough to make me ignore its politics or lack thereof: I don't buy the rightwing, cold war ideology of John Ford's Fort Apache, either, but it's still a masterpiece. Lone Survivor is not in that category, but its visceral impact makes it well worth catching.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/27/lone-survivor-classic-platoon-flick
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