chemistry for the audience to really feel these characters as not just characters in the film, but in real life as well. From Wahlberg to Foster, all four leads play their roles very carefully and it pays off especially when we see each of them in peril. With such a connection made in the first slow building hour, we are then dropped into a forty five minute, pulse pounding shootout between a huge Taliban force and four trained Navy SEALs. As the title suggest, the shootout does not end pretty and never even comes close to sugar coating the brutal nature of war. The entire shootout sequence is filled with hard edged moments of brutality, gore and truly gut wrenching scenes. It is by far one of the most heart racing moments in recent cinema and considering the end results, it is very heart wrenching that by the end of it, you feel as if the wind has been knocked out of you. By the end of the film, Lone Survivor makes you really appreciate the freedom you have, a feat that has not yet been achieved in film up until now. This film is as good as Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan, it is absolutely worth seeing on the big screen and I highly recommend it.

tears. I can honestly not remember the last time a Hollywood movie did that.Very moving, very poignant, very touching. For that alone, as well as for keeping me riveted for the whole of two hours which is quite a feat given my cynical and jaded nature , it deserves unalloyed plaudits.

F*** everything else, these guys are Real Heroes, I wish I could shake hands with Marcus just once in my lifetime, I am from India BTW , Do not miss this one , this movie moved me .

action movie. A squad of US navy SEALs is dispatched on an assassination mission. Things do not go as planned.However, the quality of the cinematography, solid acting and good action is what makes this such a great film.Out of all the actors getting to play a part not one is bad. Not one fakes it. It feels that everyone is trying to do their best.The film is also gorgeous. It didn't have to be. It is. The Afghanistan these guys are in is fake because the entire movie was shot in the United States, but it looks authentic and breathtaking.The action is raw and graphic. Not in a guts-on-the-floor kind of way, but falling-down-a-cliff-side kind of way. Again, you can feel that the people have tried to do a good job. You know how just much they tried? Broken ribs and punctured lungs were involved in the making of this movie.If there is one problem I have with the film is that it has a self-imposing limit to how big or interesting it can be. It is a story about one military operation and nothing else. No background stories for the characters, no side events, and barely any relationship development. I remember as a kid I was really fascinated by the military ops and wrote a story, as good as I could, about an imaginary mission. Even as I was writing it, I realised that it can never be truly interesting to read because the range of the story is too small. And this film is like that. What's worse, the title of this film gives away the ending. It is basically a giant spoiler.But it is a testament to the movie's quality that, even though the movie gives almost no background information to the characters, it still managed to really make me care about them. Even with weights on its legs, the film still manages to make such an interesting run.

is a tame word here too. Making the one out of three call, is a tough one too, some of it involving procedure, other parts of it, sparing the safety of the squad. The photography and direction are number one. Some parts of this movie, I warn you are incredibly tense and ugly. Working through story, step by step, in the factual events that occurred, through the real life 2005 incident, the movie comes off as top floor story/filmmaking of this genre. Probably in a couple of ways, it's better than last years, Zero Dark Thirty. I'll be honest, as a quality war film, it's better than I'd thought it'd be. When it opens, I advise you to see it. You'll be pleasantly surprised, but also by it, being directed by Peter Berg who brought that guilty pleasure-blacker than black comedy, Very Bad Things. A great way to start off the movies of 2014, but too The Wolf Of Wall Street, opens the same day here.

that this feels as real as it can be, without you actually being in a war. Mark Wahlberg and the other actors have to go through a lot, when ... well you know what hits the fence. And it does hit pretty hard. Not for anyone squeamish, this is fraught with tension ...

slow motion while scores of Taliban died instantly and kind of stupidly didn't help with the empathy. Also showing pictures of dead soldiers with their families with a pathetic American remake of Bowie's Heroes singing in the background at the end of the movie just fueled more rage. People in the field try to carry out their mission and survive, while their deaths become political and mediatic material. I didn't enjoy that.On the other hand, the fights were realistic, the subject based on real events and, outside the pathetism described above, I did not detect a bias towards one side or the other. You will witness two hours of low tech war in all of its horror and stupidity. The actors also play well, although I like Mark Wahlberg in almost everything he does.The story, while showing the preparation, courage and resilience of four soldiers in enemy territory, also showed other things, like the logistical blunders that lead to stupid deaths, over-reliance on technology that doesn't really work as you expect and how choices have consequences on the ground that are beyond the ability of normal courts to understand, whether looking from the legal or moral angle.I liked a lot about the movie how it made you think long after it was over. What would have happened if they just killed the herders? What would have happened if they tied them up, went a bit down, risked a sniper shot at the enemy commander, then just ran? What would have happened if the Pashtuni would have ignored the wounded American or would have killed the Taliban scout force when they came to them? How would the mission have gone if the four guys would have known from the get go that they would be completely alone, with no support or hope for extraction?Overall, a very emotional movie, two hours long, that shows more a general type of heroism than one with a specific purpose. Nicely directed and acted. A bit over dramatic, but then that's to be expected. Worth watching.

with the actors lets viewers feel for the real life persons and their portrayed characters in the film. Soon after though, they are dropped into enemy territory on an operation to take out a Taliban leader. The mission goes awry when they encounter a small group of locals there, and they are faced with the decision of killing them and letting go. From here, the intensity begins to climb. What is the right thing to do? What would you do? Faced with that moral situation, they decide to cut them loose - soon after, Taliban forces are hot on their tail. The next 40 minutes or so are an action-packed, non-stop brutal war scene. Tension builds as a scope lines up with an enemy head. The shot is fired, blood flies, and the chase begins. With an abundance of slow- mo shots, clear close-ups of kills and wounds, the excellent direction and cinematography provide a painful journey that makes you cringe or tear up the same as the four soldiers. And all of these men in the film play their roles greatly. Just listing them off - Walhberg tough as usual, Hirsch strong and vulnerable, Kitsch pulling off the difficult decisions as leader, and Foster frighteningly embodying cold but caring.These forty minutes of intensity must be attributed to the whole team and crew though. Beyond the camera work and editing, much of the scenes work well because of the locations, the costuming, the painful makeup and design for all the wounds, the typical and tacky war-epic music. The writing and delivery of lines keep the pacing quick and engaging. Regardless of the how the majority of the movie is taken, the conclusion of the film is a nice touch and shows - even with the bloody action and cheesiness - what the film's really about: giving the story of these men who served the country. Lone Survivor, while it can be perceived as more American propaganda, still gives a brutal yet touching look at this journey of four brothers through war. Yes, there were tears. RATING: [8/10]

triumphant reflections with the adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front. But while all wars impact people there aren't enough films that showcase true examples of wartime heroism which neglects a chance to embrace the humanity in the soldiers who are put into these tumultuous and life threatening circumstances. This is where Peter Berg's ominously titled latest film Lone Survivor differs from the a vast majority of the war film experience because rather than postulating on the reasons or criticisms for war it only seeks to depict the strong links of brotherhood involved in our armed forces ranks through an effective nonpartisan slant. Returning to his attention to detail roots showcased in The Kingdom and leaving behind an unfortunate deviation into the ridiculous with Battleship, Berg has concocted a relatively solid film in Lone Survivor that follows the real life events that happened in 2005 to Navy SEAL Mark Luttrell and his team in the Afghanistan Mountains when a secret operation is compromised. Though the film could have had deeper character development and interaction in the first quarter of the film, an aspect that slightly detriments the overall impact of the picture, its solid and intimate middle core of brutally authentic wartime conflict captured in real time is a technically astounding, emotionally engaging, and definite pulse pounding experience. To the film's creative credit in staying true to the events that transpired it demonstrates that the relentless pummeling of war doesn't always come with the Hollywood convention that is graceful relief giving the film a true experience of modern warfare. Lone Survivor might have its storytelling flaws, mainly due to a conventional structure and some fairly assumed character involvement, but when it erupts into the focused intimacy of soldier bonding amidst the chaotic brutality of battle in the middle of the film it becomes a relatively involving homage to the relentless dedication of spirit within our soldiers.More on this review: http://wp.me/py8op-Cx; Other reviews: generationfilm.net