Lone Survivor is coming out this week. If you want a review or analysis, go over to On Violence. This is their show.
There are a few things, however, that I would like to say about it.
First, the trailer is really unsettling to family members of anyone who has someone currently deployed or will soon be deploying to Afghanistan.
I spent a good portion of my holiday leave cringing around family when the trailer would come on. I go to the movies a lot, and saw the trailer three or four times in the theater over the past month and just about as many references on television. For most of the movie-going audience, I imagine that the trailer hints at the possibility to escape, as in, escapism. Going to the movies is a place to escape from reality, even if they are escaping to the war in Afghanistan.
But what if you are one of the few that actually goes to Afghanistan? That’s not escapism. It’s more like voyeurism for the masses. A safe way to experience something terrible.
More so than Zero Dark Thirty, Lone Survivor gets the seal of authenticity. Marcus Luttrell wrote the book that the movie was based on and he played a role in making sure some of the details were right. It’s his story, and a true story, so how can it be criticized?
Is Lone Survivor the Green Berets of the Afghanistan war?
There have been a number of Iraq War movies over the past ten years. With the exception of the critical acclaim The Hurt Locker received, most of them have done pretty poorly. I can’t even remember a single war movie about Afghanistan, unless you count Zero Dark Thirty.
Now, here we are. A big-budget Hollywood movie that is being marketed as “the best war film since Saving Private Ryan.”
It makes me think back to another movie that came out during the war it depicted: The Green Berets. That film, featuring John Wayne, was released in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War. It is criticized as being insanely pro-military and simplistic in nature. In defense of the film, John Wayne said his “motive was to glorify American soldiers as the finest fighting men “without going into why we are there, or if they should be there.” His “compulsion” to do the movie was based on his pride of the Special Forces, determined to show “what a magnificent job this still little-known branch of service is doing.”
Lone Survivor’s tagline is ‘Live to Tell the Story.’ In press, Marcus Lutrell says he feels like his job is to get the word out about what these amazing men accomplished.
According to Metacritic, the film is getting average or mixed reviews. My sense (having not seen it) is that this isn’t our Full Metal Jacket, or Platoon, or Apocalypse Now. This is another Black Hawk Down. This is big budget. This is Hollywood. This is The Green Berets.
This isn’t the Iraq/Afghanistan war movie I’ve been waiting for.
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Carrying the Gun 