Larry Gude
Strung Out
...crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.
OK, enough with the nice stuff. In the pantheon of FAIL that is the world of 'book to movie', Lone Survivor earns a...Lone...place of dishonor. I'd read some reviews and some of the give and take over accuracy v. Hollywood, what changes matter, and to what degree changes that are simply artistic license and don't much change or alter the backbone of the movie, the point. So, I was prepared to set what I'd read aside and just enjoy the show.
Intermission; Leitersburg Cinema is THE bomb if you're ever in Hagerstown and want a movie. Leather recliners, pick your seats, will absolutely go back.
Back to the show. Lone Survivor takes THE central theme from the book, the tribal customs of the locals that is the LONE reason the central character was the LONE survivor, and completely makes up what happened, 180 degrees out and...OK. I am getting pissed just thinking about it. They may as well have had the Germans attacking Pearl Harbor.
If you read the book and want to see the movie, just pretend it's a different book the movie is supposed to be about. One you haven't read. Then, you can be in the same boat as the director and screen writers because, apparently, they ain't read it 'nither.
If you've read the "Saving Private Ryan" analogies about the battle scenes, the extreme realism, forget it. If 'Ryan' is WAY real, 'Lone' is a video game. It takes our four heros and may as well have them leap out of a plane from 5,000 feet, sans parachute, for their insertion, crash land through trees and into a boulder field and then walk off. If it shocked you that Dale Earnhardts crash didn't seem like it should have been fatal, our SEAL's go through a scene that would have killed them had they been IN a car, with airbags and full racing restraints. It's absurd, even more so, if you read the book. Plus, their facial injuries have this high school play quality to the makeup. They, essentially, turn these guys faces to hamburger and splash on a touch of watery ketchup and call it good. Decidedly un-Ryan.
Further, every gun shot is classic Peckinpah; the body shot exploding lava thing that no one who has ever hunted, let along shot someone in combat, has ever seen. Even one of the critical scenes, through gear and clothing, enormous surface explosions of lava. It got so ridiculous, I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing.
They take a number of other key points from the book and turn them into 'grandeur' scenes, especially the death of Micheal Murphy who ran out into the open not once but, twice, in the real battle to try and get a communications signal to call for help, exposing himself, briefly, to enemy fire. The movie takes what was a quick sprint into an opening and turns it into this epic journey, Murphy moments ago shot up so bad he could barely crawl, running across a boulder field, in full view of ALL the bad guys, 200 or so instead of the 30 or so it really was, with machine guns, 100's of yards, in the open, and out on this gorgeous rock ledge that looks out over the valley below where, finally, 200 guys with machine guns, less than 100 yards away, get a bead on him.
The death of Matt Axeslon is worse. Matt, most likely, crawled off, mortally wounded and certainly died alone as the other two who perished were found, stripped and video taped. In the beginning, the bad guys hack off a villagers head for helping Americans. Hacking, like an axe but, with a knife even though everyone who is interested knows exactly how beheadings are done in the Muslim world, essentially sawing your head off once they slice through the soft part. Well, OK, they choose to not show a 'real' beheading, pulling the shot back and, fine, draw a line and call it 'too gruesome' but, don't then turn around and take a guy who we DO NOT know how he actually died and rest him up against a tree and give him the saddest, gasping, slowly fading death and, just as he's about gone, shoot him in the ####ing forehead with the ONLY gunshot of the entire movie that looks real.
The 'moral' scene where they debate what to do with the goat herders turns Marcus, the Lone Survivor, into the ONE guy who was adamantly against executing them, a contention he barely touches on in the book with even the slight suggestion some of the others were for killing them outraging family members back then. The movie makes the other three seriously consider it, one absolutely for it and the leader casting about for his decision. Awful. Just awful.
To end this mess, it ends with Luttrell, the Lone Survivor, dying in the OR and then coming back to life when, in reality, Marcus insisted in walking off the chopper when they got back.
They take some really good stuff and toss it out, the Afghan tribal custom, especially, and throw in a BUNCH of crap that not only did NOT happen is exactly opposite and other things made up for unnecessary shock value.
In any event, if you like action war movies with no thinking, no shades of gray, nothing more redeeming than fight for your buddy and wanna eat popcorn on the edge of your seat, enjoy. If you read the book, forget you did. If you're looking for a 'Ryan' or 'Blackhawk Down' type extreme realism war flick, forget that, too.
1 star because I can't give zero.
OK, enough with the nice stuff. In the pantheon of FAIL that is the world of 'book to movie', Lone Survivor earns a...Lone...place of dishonor. I'd read some reviews and some of the give and take over accuracy v. Hollywood, what changes matter, and to what degree changes that are simply artistic license and don't much change or alter the backbone of the movie, the point. So, I was prepared to set what I'd read aside and just enjoy the show.
Intermission; Leitersburg Cinema is THE bomb if you're ever in Hagerstown and want a movie. Leather recliners, pick your seats, will absolutely go back.
Back to the show. Lone Survivor takes THE central theme from the book, the tribal customs of the locals that is the LONE reason the central character was the LONE survivor, and completely makes up what happened, 180 degrees out and...OK. I am getting pissed just thinking about it. They may as well have had the Germans attacking Pearl Harbor.
If you read the book and want to see the movie, just pretend it's a different book the movie is supposed to be about. One you haven't read. Then, you can be in the same boat as the director and screen writers because, apparently, they ain't read it 'nither.
If you've read the "Saving Private Ryan" analogies about the battle scenes, the extreme realism, forget it. If 'Ryan' is WAY real, 'Lone' is a video game. It takes our four heros and may as well have them leap out of a plane from 5,000 feet, sans parachute, for their insertion, crash land through trees and into a boulder field and then walk off. If it shocked you that Dale Earnhardts crash didn't seem like it should have been fatal, our SEAL's go through a scene that would have killed them had they been IN a car, with airbags and full racing restraints. It's absurd, even more so, if you read the book. Plus, their facial injuries have this high school play quality to the makeup. They, essentially, turn these guys faces to hamburger and splash on a touch of watery ketchup and call it good. Decidedly un-Ryan.
Further, every gun shot is classic Peckinpah; the body shot exploding lava thing that no one who has ever hunted, let along shot someone in combat, has ever seen. Even one of the critical scenes, through gear and clothing, enormous surface explosions of lava. It got so ridiculous, I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing.
They take a number of other key points from the book and turn them into 'grandeur' scenes, especially the death of Micheal Murphy who ran out into the open not once but, twice, in the real battle to try and get a communications signal to call for help, exposing himself, briefly, to enemy fire. The movie takes what was a quick sprint into an opening and turns it into this epic journey, Murphy moments ago shot up so bad he could barely crawl, running across a boulder field, in full view of ALL the bad guys, 200 or so instead of the 30 or so it really was, with machine guns, 100's of yards, in the open, and out on this gorgeous rock ledge that looks out over the valley below where, finally, 200 guys with machine guns, less than 100 yards away, get a bead on him.
The death of Matt Axeslon is worse. Matt, most likely, crawled off, mortally wounded and certainly died alone as the other two who perished were found, stripped and video taped. In the beginning, the bad guys hack off a villagers head for helping Americans. Hacking, like an axe but, with a knife even though everyone who is interested knows exactly how beheadings are done in the Muslim world, essentially sawing your head off once they slice through the soft part. Well, OK, they choose to not show a 'real' beheading, pulling the shot back and, fine, draw a line and call it 'too gruesome' but, don't then turn around and take a guy who we DO NOT know how he actually died and rest him up against a tree and give him the saddest, gasping, slowly fading death and, just as he's about gone, shoot him in the ####ing forehead with the ONLY gunshot of the entire movie that looks real.
The 'moral' scene where they debate what to do with the goat herders turns Marcus, the Lone Survivor, into the ONE guy who was adamantly against executing them, a contention he barely touches on in the book with even the slight suggestion some of the others were for killing them outraging family members back then. The movie makes the other three seriously consider it, one absolutely for it and the leader casting about for his decision. Awful. Just awful.
To end this mess, it ends with Luttrell, the Lone Survivor, dying in the OR and then coming back to life when, in reality, Marcus insisted in walking off the chopper when they got back.
They take some really good stuff and toss it out, the Afghan tribal custom, especially, and throw in a BUNCH of crap that not only did NOT happen is exactly opposite and other things made up for unnecessary shock value.
In any event, if you like action war movies with no thinking, no shades of gray, nothing more redeeming than fight for your buddy and wanna eat popcorn on the edge of your seat, enjoy. If you read the book, forget you did. If you're looking for a 'Ryan' or 'Blackhawk Down' type extreme realism war flick, forget that, too.
1 star because I can't give zero.
Unfortunately we watched that movie next to two young history buffs and I'm surprised all four of us weren't thrown out of the theater.
