OVP: Lone Survivor (2013)

Film: Lone Survivor (2013)
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, Eric Bana, Alexander Ludwig
Director: Peter Berg
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Sound Mixing and Sound Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

You know one of the best parts of February?  No, it's not the Valentine's Day festivities (anyone else celebrate that day while watching horror films and eating cookie dough straight from the tub, salmonella be damned?), it's the 31 Days of Oscar!  That's right-for the next 31 days, Turner Classic Movies will be airing wall-to-wall Oscar nominated films.  Since I love Turner Classic Movies something fierce, I figured that for the next 31 days, I can try and match them, so here's my goal: for the next 31 days (neatly coinciding with the day after the big ceremony), every single day on this blog, I will commit to at least one Oscar related article.  It may be reviews, OVP write-ups, commentary, or just some good old fashioned predictions, but there will be something gold and shiny to look forward to every day.  We'll start off with one of this year's nominees, Lone Survivor.

(Real life doesn't have spoilers) Mark Wahlberg is an odd conundrum in my book as far as a movie star.  His off-screen persona kind of jars with me (as is the case of a lot of conservative celebrities, fairly or unfairly...though for some reason even I cannot explain my fondness for Elisabeth Hasselbeck), his movies are regularly hit-and-miss, and yet he's definitely an artist who has vision.  Whether it's in performances like The Departed (such a terrific choice by the Academy to nominate him for that) or his producing credits (it may have gone downhill later on, but I was enthralled with the first season of Boardwalk Empire), he clearly is one of those actors who does well in front of and behind the camera, and occasionally I find myself rooting for one of his films despite myself.

This movie happened to be the case-I'm never a sucker for real-life dramas, nor am I big on the "rah-rah" sorts of war dramas (I prefer my Hollywood war films to be more in the mold of Apocalypse Now, and my real life wars to be limited and few).  However, I couldn't help myself with being absolutely engrossed in this movie.

The film doesn't start out with as much promise as I'm giving it-the hyper-macho, best-of-the-best attitude of the onscreen Navy Seals (all six of the men listed in the star lineup) is something that's been done before, many times, and while it may be accurate, it hardly makes for gripping cinema. The banter between each actor, and particularly their attitude to Alexander Ludwig (who may be a brick house, but cannot act worth a damn which is more than evident when you're standing next to Wahlberg, Foster, and Hirsch) is so brimming with cliche that I started to shift uneasily in my chair, knowing I may have to sit through 120 minutes of this.

However, once the four men (Foster, Wahlberg, Hirsch, and Kitsch) all head out onto their mission, the movie really picks up steam and eventually becomes downright heart-stopping.  Peter Berg had an odious task when it comes to the film-how do you keep a movie about four men interesting when the title gives away that only one is coming back...and that one is revealed in the film's opening scene?  The answer is through some really terrific editing decisions, particularly the extended sequences in the second hour of the film.  The four men, after being discovered by the Taliban, stage an epic shootout in near real-time, and we see slowly as they deteriorate in body but rarely in spirit.

Again, this isn't the sort of cinema that I usually latch onto (I like a more "shades of grey" approach), but the actors, and particularly the editors/sound team sell the shit out of this sequence.  Wahlberg and in particular Emile Hirsch both know how to have that fear lurking beneath the surface, being kept down by overcompensating bravado.  The sequences are so compelling and consistently raw that you forget that only one will come back, and you start to pray that by some twist of fate more will survive.  Oscar could have found room for the editors, in my opinion (so many films deserved that nomination over Dallas Buyers Club, Lone Survivor included), but I'm glad that it recognized the superb sound work, which at its best is giving even Gravity a run for its money.

The film is not Grade-A entertainment, of course.  The movie, aside from miscasting Ludwig and to some extent Kitsch, has to sacrifice some key plot by giving us that truly spectacular battle sequence.  Principally, I could have done without the reassurance that Ben Foster's Axe gives Wahlberg's Marcus late in the film, assuring him that they did the right thing by letting three civilians who led to their deaths go.  I have true trouble believing that, in the heat of battle, Axe (who had been against letting them go in the first place) would have said this (or, more accurately, believed it), and Foster's conviction seems to imply both.  This exchange takes away quite a bit from the final fifteen minutes of the film (which seem to come out of nowhere, with Marcus inexplicably rescued by villagers).  Again, both these things may well have happened, but it's the principle reason that I don't like true stories or completely accurate depictions of a story onscreen: movies are about crafting the best possible story, and neither of these  things help the film's narrative.

But overall, I'm in the positive camp here.  The film's action sequences are more than worth the price of admission, and brava to the OVP for getting me out to a movie I would have normally skipped.  What were your thoughts on Lone Survivor?  Where do you think it should rank in its two Oscar categories?  Share in the comments!