“Lone Survivor” provides further proof that war is, indeed, hell.
The battle scene that takes up much of the film’s running time is a Hieronymus Bosch style glimpse into the very heart of battle. Grisly and gory, it is about pushing the limits of endurance as far as possible.
But “Lone Survivor” isn’t simply a shoot ‘em up.
Between the bullets is a complex story about morality and the men who put themselves in harm’s way.
The film is based on the real-life SEAL Team 10’s Operation Red Wings, a failed 2005—the movie’s title in itself is a spoiler—War in Afghanistan mission to locate, capture (or eliminate) Taliban leader Ahmad Shah (Yousuf Azami).
The carefully planned operation goes wrong almost as soon as the team—SO2 Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), LT Michael P. Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), SO2 Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) and SO2 Matthew Axelson (Ben Foster)—touch ground in the Kush Mountains. Their job is hindered by faulty a communication radio, but the mission is undone when they are discovered by an older man and two boys.
The commandoes make the decision to let the four unarmed shepherds go, but their kindness comes back to haunt them when shortly afterwards a Taliban army descends on their position and they are hopelessly outnumbered.
There’s no gunfire in the first hour of “Lone Survivor.” The time is spent getting to know the characters, their situation and absorbing the gravity of the mission at hand. Then, sixty minutes in, it turns into a bullet ballet. But it is those opening minutes that make the payoff of the last hour so potent.
Without getting to know the brotherhood the characters share we won’t buy in later on when their bond and training are the only things that will decide their fate.
The acting is uniformly good. Walhberg is understated but undeniably powerful as the Luttrell. His character is the glue that holds the movie together, and he delivers.
As the sharp-tongued and direct Axelson Ben Foster is, well, Ben Foster. He’s one of the best actors working today and his portrayal is passionate, patriotic but grounded in truth. It takes some doing to deliver a line like, “Did they really shoot me in the ******* head?” with any measure of believability, but Foster manages.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is Taylor Kitsch. He had a bad couple of years after becoming a small screen star on “Friday Night Lights.” The promise of a big screen career seemed to evaporate in the trifecta of failure—big budget flops “John Carter,” “Battleship,” “Savages”—but here he finds his groove and reminds us of the charisma that made him a name in the first place.
“Lone Survivor” is a visceral experience. Not since “Saving Private Ryan” has a battle scene been so effectively rendered but at its core it isn’t a propaganda film or a slice of patriotism; instead it’s a stark reminder of the camaraderie of soldiers in the field.
Fresh from the Toronto International Film Festival comes the true story of a young man who may have taken On the Road a bit too seriously. Based on the Jon Krakauer novel of the same name Into the Wild stars Emile Hirsch as Chris McCandless, an idealistic honors grad from Emory University who adopts the hobo name Alexander Supertramp and drops out of society.
For two hours and twenty minutes or so we follow Chris as he makes his way across America on his journey to solitude in Alaska. He picks up odd jobs, lives off the land, hitches a ride with nomadic hippies and even rides the rails. The experience of watching Into the Wild is much like the trip itself—it can be confounding, frustrating and occasionally boring—but I think that is director Sean Penn’s point. As a filmmaker he has never been shy about taking his time to tell the story, and here he seems to want to place us on the road with Chris. It’s a hypnotic journey and one that draws you in, maintaining interest even during the more mundane bits.
Penn has captured the rhythms of the road, and more importantly, the cadences of an itinerant life. It’s the journey that matters, and Into the Wild makes the most of the road motif, introducing us to interesting characters at every stop. There are love-sick flower children, Norwegian travelers and a charismatic, but shady farm owner. Most affecting of all is the last person he meets before he disappears into the rugged Alaskan wild, a lonely older man (Hal Holbrook) who “adopts” him for a time.
Holbrook turns in a magnificent performance, one tempered with wisdom, gentleness and a touch of desperation. The 82-year-old actor hands in one of the best supporting roles on film this year, but it might be Hirsch’s performance that is the most remarkable.
As Chris he takes a character that to my eyes isn’t immediately likeable. He’s pretentious, selfish and arrogant, but Hirsch makes him compelling—I won’t say likeable—and interesting to watch for the film’s long running time.
Into the Wild borders on self-importance, more than once spouting ideas about how “material things cut Chris off from the truth of his existence” but Penn keeps a steady hand and unerringly pulls the film back from the brink every time it feels like it is treading in waters too philosophically deep or becoming too preachy. It’s a road trip, but also a head trip and one worth taking.
Slipped into theatres with little fanfare on Christmas Day, “The Darkest Hour” is a holiday gift even less welcome than Aunt Edith’s stale fruitcake.
Before the bleak time referred to in the title, Ben and Sean (Max Minghella and Emile Hirsch) arrive in Moscow, get screwed in a major business deal, and meet some hotties (Olivia Thirlby and Rachael Taylor) in a bar. Just as things are getting cozy with their new friends the lights go dim. In another kind of movie that would mean a start to some hot and heavy romance but the only sparks that fly here are from the evil aliens who have invaded earth and use electrical impulses to disintegrate the puny humans in their path. The new friends band together to fight against the ETs, collecting a ragtag bunch of high wattage commandoes and hangers-on to form an Electrical Resistance Army to stand against the creatures.
“The Darkest Hour” could easily have been titled “The Dorkiest Hour” as it contains every nerd cliche from almost every sci fi film ever made. There’s the obvious “Red Shirt” character, doomed to die with only a few lines of dialogue under his belt.
The other characters aren’t exactly blessed with great dialogue. An endless stream of cliches–“We can’t be the only ones left!”–all have a been-there-heard-that feel.
Then there’s the human dustification annihilation scenes lifted from “War of the Worlds,” and the eerily empty city streets borrowed from “I Am Legend” and “28 Days Later,” are just a couple of the movie homages that make up this science fiction pastiche. The entire thing plays out like a cut and paste job.
Still, cut and paste jobs are nothing new in movies and even the most cliche film can be rescued if it has compelling characters. Unfortunately “The Darkest Hour” falls down on that score as well. I’m sure they all have character names but they’re so uninteresting they may as well be called Generic Girl Number 1 or Unexpected Hero with an Attitude. Quick! Somebody call Central Casting! Some of their stock characters have escaped their cages!
“The Darkest Hour” almost lives up to its name. It’s a dark, dull way to spend, not hours, but ninety minutes.
The title sounds ripped from the headlines, but is actually from a 1994 novel by the late Chris Fuhrman, who died of cancer before the book was released. The story centers around a group of teenaged boys who attend Catholic school. Their ringleader Tim (Kieran Culkin) is a prankster who schemes to get revenge on Sister Assumpta (Jody Foster), the joyless, strict nun with a prosthetic leg. They create a “blasphemous” comic book, and plan to kidnap a cougar from the zoo to give her a fright. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is a darkly comic, touching coming-of-age story that could have turned into by-the-book teenage drivel, but is rescued by the performances of Kieran Culkin, Emile Hirsch and Jena Malone and some very cool animation by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane.
“Lone Survivor” provides further proof that war is, indeed, hell.
