Lone Survivor (2013)

[bigburner]

This film by director Peter Berg is definitely worth a look as long as you don't mind digesting a large portion of graphic violence with a jingoistic dressing drizzled lightly over the top. I don't know how realistic the action is but I'd like to have a discussion with a special forces person to find out. One thing that didn't look authentic was the terrain. It looked more like a national park frequented by boy scouts than the stark landscape I remember when I visited Afghanistan in 1974.

Nigel.

[Ovation]

This film by director Peter Berg is definitely worth a look as long as you don't mind digesting a large portion of graphic violence with a jingoistic dressing drizzled lightly over the top. I don't know how realistic the action is but I'd like to have a discussion with a special forces person to find out. One thing that didn't look authentic was the terrain. It looked more like a national park frequented by boy scouts than the stark landscape I remember when I visited Afghanistan in 1974.

Nigel.

It was filmed in New Mexico. The wikipedia entry goes into some detail about the making of the film and it seems a considerable number of actual special forces people were on hand as technical advisors, including the author of the book upon which the film was based. From having researched other films of this nature (both recent and from some time ago) for my work, I would rank this one as highly realistic in terms of the action it depicts (notwithstanding all the limitations inherent in cinematic recreations). As far as I recall from my viewing at the cinema some months ago, there are no stylized depictions in the manner of films with "slo-mo" scenes (Pekinpah and Stone come to mind). It is more reminiscent of Black Hawk Down or Saving Private Ryan.