Middling "Lone Survivor" Disappoints Despite Great Craftsmanship

The actors in Lone Survivor do some heavy lifting to make up for
thin characterizations.

Given the fact that director Peter Berg got Universal to bankroll Lone Survivor by making Battleship in a “one for me, one for them” deal (as mentioned in my review of that train wreck), I’m kind of surprised at how middle-of-the-road a film it turned out to be.

I was expecting something with a bit more bite, something that was character focused and challenging, but Lone Survivor is basically a jingoistic love letter to Navy Seals. It’s a lot more Act of Valor than The Hurt Locker. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s certainly a disappointing one.

Based on Marcus Luttrell’s book of the same name, Lone Survivor details how he and three other Seals came across some sheep herders while on a mission in Afghanistan and, instead of killing them or leaving them for dead, decided to let them go. This humanistic act compromised their mission, cost three of them their lives, and led to the death of 16 others who were attempting to rescue them. Luttrell made it out alive, but only due to the protection of some brave Pashtun villagers who helped him due to their traditional belief in Pashtunwali, a code of honor that grants visitors refuge from enemies.

The film kicks into high-gear right when the foursome comes across the herders. The debate over how to handle the situation is given proper weight, and the 40-minute firefight that follows is a truly visceral experience, an all-time example of battle depiction on film that manages to capture the harrowing tension and confusion of the moment all the while maintaining a plausible choreography. 

The problem with the film has to do with everything outside this extended sequence. I’ve often heard critics take issue with Saving Private Ryan, acknowledging that although it has classic battle scenes at the beginning and at the end, everything else is sentimental bullshit.

More on the concept of Pastunwali would've been welcome given it's
importance to Marcus Luttrell's survival.

A movie like Lone Survivor really illustrates how ridiculously off base that argument is. Saving Private Ryan does indulge in some ill-advised schmaltz with its graveyard denouement, but it also has a script that works to tangibly develop its soldiers into believable people.

Lone Survivor does not. Its setup is all cookie cutter, with most of the early screen time dedicated to scatter-shot rah rah initiation rituals in lieu of authentic character moments. That’s understandable given the fact that the film wants to honor all the men who sacrificed their lives, but such an approach ultimately leaves things feeling half-baked.

The film also would've benefited from devoting more time to the concept of Pastunwali, which is really only highlighted by a sentence or two at the end of the movie. We never see Luttrell’s discovery of why these people helped him, an odd decision given the intriguing circuitry to the fact that his salvation was brought about by the same type of stick-your-neck-out compassion that caused the death of his fellow soldiers.

Although their roles are thinly written, a special note has to be made of the central quartet of actors. Mark Wahlberg anchors the film nicely as Luttrell, and he really sells the desperate confusion during the Pashtun village scenes. Meanwhile, Emile Hirsch, Taylor Kitsch and especially Ben Foster do a great job with what they’re given here, implying all sorts of humanity that’s simply not on the page.

In all, I’m OK with Lone Survivor. I appreciate the craftsmanship, think the actors perform admirably and love the way Berg and his crew put you in the moment. However, I feel like this adaptation is ultimately a missed opportunity. In real life, this is a moving, thought-provoking and life-affirming story. On the screen? Not so much. 

"Out of the Furnace" and "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" Squander Strengths by Overreaching

Despite it's drawbacks, there is a palpable emotional undercurrent to
Out of the Furnace, largely due to Bale's stellar performance.

I recently took in two extremely well-reviewed Casey Affleck movies – Out of the Furnace and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints – and my feelings about them are so similar that it made sense to throw them together in the same review.

Both are stripped-down entries that admirably avoid artifice and offer subtle, lived-in work from a talented assortment of actors. But both also take narratives that would normally make for fun, pulpy b-movies and turn them into somber, artsy-fartsy ballads straining for profundity.

I’m all about subverting genre conventions, and as a general rule I’m not against these sort of lyrical meditations – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford does something similar, and it’s one of my favorite films (oddly enough, it also stars Affleck as a troubled outsider). But going this route can totally defang a story, turning what could be something worthwhile into a boring and opaque disappointment.

Of the two, Out of the Furnace is the superior film. It stars Christian Bale as a hard-working grunt at a steel mill who lands in jail after a fatal drunk driving accident. While incarcerated, he loses his girlfriend (Zoe Saldana) to a local cop (Forest Whitaker) and misses out on the remaining days of his sickly father. The only thing he retains is the love of his troubled brother (Affleck), a restless and emotionally damaged Iraqi War veteran who falls into a bare-knuckle brawling ring populated by some shady criminals, including a mostly honorable loan shark (Willem Dafoe) and a homicidal maniac (Woody Harrelson).

The film has a lot going for it. All the actors are in peak form, insinuating as much character and personality as is possible with such a bare bones approach. Bale shares a particularly good scene with Saldana that brutally exhibits what his mistake cost him, and his brotherly bond with Affleck is believably wrought.

There’s also a nicely modulated mournfulness hovering over this story of blue collar hardship, and it has a good thread at its core. I could easily imagine all of these components adding up to an excellent drama about a good man who did a bad thing and is now left to pick up the pieces. Instead, writer/director Scott Copper gets bogged down with exploring unsatisfying revenge elements. The film builds to its logical conclusion and ends with a boldly tantalizing final image, but it’s all just so limp.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints embraces a Malick-like aesthetic.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints fairs worse because the character dynamics aren’t as engrossing and the bad guys are woefully undefined. It focuses on Ruth (Rooney Mara) and Bob (Affleck), Bonnie and Clyde types who get involved in a robbery gone wrong and end up in a shootout during which Ruth shoots a cop (Ben Foster). Since Ruth is pregnant with their child, Bob takes the fall, claiming Ruth was an innocent victim in all of it.

Several years later, Ruth is on the straight and narrow, leading a simple life with her daughter Sylvie. When Bob breaks out of prison prepared to whisk his family away, Ruth has to consider what’s right for her daughter. There’s also the matter of that cop Ruth shot, who in investigating Bob’s jailbreak grows closer to her and Sylvie.

Once again, there are things to like – the setup is decent, the cinematography is breathtaking and the acting is top-notch – but writer/director David Lowery’s emphasis is put so emphatically on the picturesque landscape and poetic atmosphere that the whole thing plays as if on mute. Once Bob breaks out, he not only has to worry about the law, but also three shady goons out for blood, and it is never explained where these baddies came from. Some might see this ambiguity as strength, but it only works to add confusion.

These movies have their share of positives, but ultimately they are just too ponderous and intentionally vague to register as great films. I imagine a certain type of person would go gagga over their delicate sinew or something like that, but there’s just a lifelessness to them that left me wanting more. Out of the Furnace B, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints C+