Lone Survivor

For Peter Berg, getting Lone Survivor right was very important, and there are a number of reasons why its success was key.  First of all, it is based off of and honouring the service and sacrifice of soldiers in Afghanistan and a failed component of Operation Red Wings.  Also, this was a passion project of Berg’s, which he was able to do on account of accepting to direct Battleship.  Thirdly, Berg’s career was tarnished because of Battleship (I have not seen it, but can he really be blamed for a board game as such failing as a movie?) and success on Lone Survivor is what could restore his career to its previous state.

The movie follows the story of four Navy SEALs who were sent into hostile territory to perform recon before things become incredibly pear-shaped as their presence becomes known.  Playing the SEALs are Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, and Ben Foster, who are portrayed as a very tight group with a ferocious bond.  That theme is really what starts off the film, highlighting the training of endurance that they have to undergo and the brotherhood that forms.  I really do not want to sound too down on the film, but there were times where it felt like an advertisement for the Navy.

Perhaps it is because I am Canadian and not American, but it was at times almost over glorifying and romanticising the roles of the military and what they stand for.  I imagine that for a different audience, such as my neighbours to the south, there is a lot of built in pride for armed forces but that sort of thing if not properly tempered can fall victim to the cultural divide in other nations.  I do believe that perhaps the military nature of the United States and the more peace-minded nature of Canada allows for different interpretations of the film.

One thing that I find Peter Berg does effectively in action sequences is that he is able to keep them tight and quickly edited without being hard to follow.  As well, he once again proves that he has a skill of keeping action from being too ‘Hollywood’ like.  He does not focus on the explosions and the booming sound effects, but rather the scraps, bruises, shrapnel and bullets that the soldiers came face to face with.  The first action sequence has a very long build to it, and the sound track is silence, allowing a great deal of anticipation to properly build within the audience.  While I found the lead in to the first battle in the movie to be expertly done, the final conflict just sort of happened out of nowhere.  There were a few shots to establish its approach, but nothing to the extent that created the success of the first fire fight.

While the movie is called Lone Survivor, it focuses mostly on the group aspect of the battle, and less of the plight of the individual.  The movie was two hours long, but I feel like it could have used about another fifteen minutes to really catch the emotions of the experience that the one soldier went through in the ordeal.  Before anyone criticizes me for spoiling the fact that one of the soldiers survives, I refer you to the title and ensure you that it is no spoiler.  All of that to say, I felt like the singular experience was neglected for the sake of the group story and I think both could have existed in this film.

In The Kingdom, Berg does a wonderful job of taking away the concept of the blameless good guy and the pure evil of the bad guy, and was able to round out the tale with allowing perspective to the whole cycle of violence.  While he does not lend any relatable traits to the Taliban in this movie, he does work to insert bravery and morality into the people of Afghanistan to show that there is more to the story than just the American side.

In a time where action movies are pointless and supercharged with special effects and end of world consequences, Berg did a good job of delivering a more down to earth war movie.  While the action was very well done, it came off as almost over patriotic in creating these men as heroes.  I do not say that to diminish the work of the real life soldiers that it was based on, but it is more a comment in the tone of delivery.  The ending of the movie came off to be over dramatized, perhaps because of the slow paced nature and the slow tempo version of ‘We Could Be Heroes’ that played (it is a song about love, not war… maybe they should have read the lyrics).  I do think that it is important to pay tribute, but the pace of it did not fit in with the rest of the film and it felt like an over enthusiastic gut punch.

I don’t know.  Perhaps I am just a big meany, but I don’t think so.  This film is a real love letter to their legacy (almost to the point of making them a little unbelievably tough) and maybe it did not hit home because I am not within that kind of world… but is that not what a good movie does, or is supposed to do?  A great movie takes us by the hand and leads us into a part of life that we are not accustomed to and connects us with it, for good or bad, and leaves us touched by the experience. 

Rating – 2.5 out of 4 stars

Hannah's Pick - The Bang Bang Club

It is once again Wednesday, which means it is humpday.  It also means that it is time for me to review a movie that was picked for me by my sister in-law, Hannah.  The picture (pun not intended) that I will be looking at today is The Bang Bang Club, a film about a group of photographers in South Africa who operated together between 1990 and 1994 as apartheid was drawing to an end.  It is based off of a true story of photojournalists who covered the violence between supporters of the African National Congress party and the Inkatha Freedom Party.

The first act of the film starts off very strong, as we meet up with young photographer Greg (Ryan Phillipe) who is working freelance and meets the three who would later make up what was referred to as ‘The Bang Bang Club.’  He is treated well by the seasoned photojournalist and is warmly encouraged by Kevin (Taylor Kitsch) and shows a level of bravery as he heads into a hostile neighbourhood to get the other side of the story to a bloody altercation that has just happened.  This impresses the others, who allow him into their circle as they try and photograph the bloody violence that is happening in South African townships.

We see an interesting dynamic in the first part of the film, as the lens of the camera almost appears to act as an emotional divide between the photographer and the atrocities that surround them.  They look through their viewfinders and scan for pictures, all the while showing no connection to the severity of turmoil in which they are standing.  A corpse mutilated by an opposing faction is something to be captured, not something to be lamented.  It is an interesting dynamic for the viewer, who has the ability to feel for the morbid nature of what we see, and yet seeing business and profession playing out in the main characters before us.

While this presented an interesting contrast, it was not a theme that director Steven Silver seemed interested in carrying throughout.  On one hand that is good, because we want to see the emotional walls of these people start to crack and break under the reality of their jobs.  On the other hand, the execution of such a transition needs to be handled properly for it to become effective.  There were some scenes that seemed rather forced, as it tried to push the narrative into focusing more about the individuals of the group and their dynamics.  Within this shift I felt like the power that was established at the beginning of the film was left behind.

There were a number of very interesting themes that this film looked to explore though it never fully exposed any of them.  There was the racial aspect of white photographers taking pictures of black on black violence and profiting on it.  There was the celebration of accomplishment for the photographers after walking away from horrific events and the emotional disconnect that they had.  And there was the issue of them taking pictures of awful things, but not taking any action to assist fellow humans in need (this issue was perhaps investigated the most).  The film introduced each of these elements but it never felt like it did enough to develop them, and instead lightly touched down on them from time to time.  I was left feeling life there was some terrific content to be uncovered, but the transitions and pace kept the concepts from being fully explored and the emotions I was meant to feel were never given enough time to properly sink in.

That being said, there were some amazing scenes in this film that were gripping and tense.  We get scenes of literally hundreds of people in a tense standoff that the viewer is sure will end poorly.  There is an incredibly well shot pursuit through a village as Ryan Phillipe’s character is running from pursuers waving machetes.  The locations that were picked and the set-up of the scenes of turmoil were well constructed and provided a solid emotional punch.  Perhaps the most powerful scene of the movie is just how quietly someone dies from being hacked and bludgeoned, a scene that has the ability to live inside your head when the film is over.

By the time the movie came around to the end, however, I felt like the intended effect was diminished by the sometimes rushed pace that came into play during the second and third act.  I found that, just as the photographers had an emotional disconnect with what they were seeing at the beginning of the film, I had the same experience at the end.  As the story wound up I felt like I knew aspects of the characters, but never knew them as individuals, keeping me from being fully invested when they were finally personally affected by the events on the other side of their cameras.

Rating – 2.5 out of 4 stars