Lone Survivor

Though clearly an improvement over the despicable Battleship, Lone Survivor is nevertheless a disappointing, underwhelming actioner from Peter Berg – with the movie’s riveting true-life story generally employed to bland and far-from-thrilling effect. The movie, which follows four marines (Mark Wahlberg’s Marcus, Taylor Kitsch’s Michael, Emile Hirsch’s Danny, and Ben Foster’s Matt) as they get trapped behind enemy lines during a risky mission, certainly opens with a fair amount of promise, as Berg does a nice job of initially drawing the viewer into the familiar proceedings – although, by that same token, it’s clear that the film would’ve benefited from a more in-depth look at the individual protagonists (ie the four men are, to an increasingly distressing degree, basically interchangeable). The promising atmosphere is perpetuated by an engrossing early sequence in which the central foursome debate the fates of three seemingly innocent bystanders, and yet it’s equally clear that the movie begins to peter out almost immediately following that electrifying interlude – as writer/director Berg’s less-than-cinematic visual choices result in a lack of thrills that grows more and more problematic as time progresses. (And it doesn’t help, either, that it becomes increasingly difficult to discern which characters are where in terms of the movie’s poorly-established geography.) The inclusion of a handful of compelling moments within the film’s second half – eg one of the soldiers moves higher and higher on the mountain to hopefully get a radio signal – are rendered moot by the otherwise uninvolving, bland atmosphere, while the needlessly padded-out final stretch, which just seems to go on forever, is sure to test the resolve of even the most patient viewer (and this is to say nothing of the seemingly endless closing credits). The end result is a well-intentioned yet hopelessly ineffective thriller that would’ve been better off with a more talented filmmaker at the helm, as it’s becoming all-too-obvious that Berg simply doesn’t have the chops to handle big-budget action fare.

** out of ****