Lone Survivor (2013)

I realized before watching Lone Survivor is that the title itself is a spoiler.  Even without being familiar with the real events this was based on or reading Marcus Luttrell's book about his experience, all you have to do is look at the title to know how it's going to turn out.  It kind of a downer when the title saps some of the suspense of a film.  Imagine if The Sixth Sense had been alternatively titled He's a Ghost?

Lone Survivor is the true story of Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan.  Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) is part of a four-man Navy Seal team, the remainder played by Ben Foster, Taylor Kitsch and Emile Hirsch, on a mission to capture a Taliban leader.  While staking out the small village where he's hiding, a trio of goat herders, including two boys, happens upon them.  They have to make a difficult choice: let them go and hope they can get to safety before the Taliban finds them, or kill them and complete their mission.  They decide to uphold the rules of engagement and take their chances.  For the record, I voted for killing them, but I'm a murderous, cyborg psychopath.

Of course the Taliban catches up to them, and from there it becomes fight for survival.  A punishing, white-knuckle fight for survival.

Lone Survivor is just brutal at times.  This is not a glamorous film about war.  The amount of bodily abuse these guys take is superhuman.  It helps that the film begins with a montage of SEAL training.  When you see how grueling it is, it's easier to understand how these soldiers can keep going while taking so much punishment.  It's what they were trained for.

Their fight is unrelenting, and it's a little heartbreaking knowing in advance how it's going to turn out. This kind of leads into my only real issue with Lone Survivor.  We don't get to know the individuals very well. Writer/director Peter Berg decided to focus more on the action and overall heroism than any type of character moments. There are a few small details here and there, but we know almost nothing about them otherwise.  In fact, I struggled to recall anyone's name by the end.  We care because they are our soldiers and we want to see them survive, but not because of any emotional investment we have with them.  As the film is a tribute to these soldiers, I would have liked to know more about them personally.

Despite not getting to know the team, there is a clear sense of brotherhood and how much they care about each other.  Team is made up of a very strong cast that makes it a little easier to connect with them.  While Wahlberg is the star, I don't want to single anyone out as it kind of takes away from the sacrifice they collectively made.  It didn't take too long before I stopped seeing them as Marky Mark, Warren Worthington, the kid from The Girl Next Door and Tim Riggins, and just saw them as soldiers.  And of course no military-themed Peter Berg film would be complete without a Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) sighting.

The overall intensity of the action makes it easy to overlook these flaws.  Once the firefight begins, you'll be on the edge of your seat until the conclusion.  With the way the action was shot, there are many moments where you feel immersed in it.  I'm kicking myself for not seeing this in RPX as the sound was fantastic.  There are rattling explosions that made me jump in my seat a few times.  Nothing beats the throaty, metallic sound of the sniper rifle either.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was an MK 12 (had to look it up).  A better sound system in the theatre would have really made this sing.

Sure, you might come out of it a little, "Rah, rah, USA," but what's wrong with that?  I'm sure that's a little bit of what Peter Berg was going for, but it's not over the top.  I didn't watch Lone Survivor and feel like it was a recruitment film or shoving politics in your face.  It's pretty neutral as far as that goes, and is more about the mission and the the sacrifice of the soldiers.

While Lone Survivor is a brutal war movie, it's also a powerful tribute to the courage and resilience of these soldiers.  If this wasn't based on a true story, it would be easier to watch this as simply a very good action film, but knowing the sacrifice behind it adds a solemn feeling.  Definitely worth a watch though and one of the more realistic films about war I've seen in a while.

4 (out of 5) Death Stars

Kill Your Darlings (2013)

About twenty minutes into Kill Your Darlings I knew I was in trouble.  I was already having a hard time getting into it and still had well over an hour to go.  It didn't help that this featured some of the founding members of the Beat Generation, which I've never really cared much about.  Well, if you're not a fan of the Beat Generation, why in the hell did you see this, you ask?  I honestly didn't know that's was Kill Your Darlings was about.  I mainly saw this because it stars Dane DeHaan, one of my favorite young actors, and Daniel Radcliffe, whose career choices I'm following very closely post-Potter.

Believe it or not, I try to go into most movies knowing as little as possible about them.  I avoid trailers as much as I can, and stay off the web to avoid spoilers.  Many times I'm not even aware of who wrote or directed the film until the credits roll.  If it's based on a book, I won't touch it until after I see the movie.  I do this mainly to avoid going in with certain expectations, especially when I know it's from a writer or a director I may or may not like.  I know sometimes that's unavoidable with the bigger releases, or when the commercials or posters say, "Brought to you by the director of this and that."  Generally speaking, I try to go in as 'clean' as I can, and many times I usually don't know much more than the lead actors.

Kill Your Darlings follows the story involving the murder of David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), and the early days of the Beat Generation.  As the movie begins with the murder and the accused, Lucien Carr (DeHaan) already in jail, there's little suspense at all to the remainder of the story.  We mainly watch Carr, Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) drink, do drugs, listen to music, and cause mischief.  I don't find it all that interesting to watch people do drugs, especially when I have no experience with their drug of choice.  I have no problem with alcohol and marijuana, but I have no knowledge at all of benzedrine.  Watching people listen to music is also pretty uninteresting to me, too.  Would like to see a Youtube video of me sitting in a bar watching a band you've never heard of that doesn't focus on the band or music?  Pretty fascinating, right?  Kill Your Darlings features much of the same general hedonism that I disliked about On The Road, only with less misogyny.  I guess if you think about it, this is sort of a prequel to On The Road.  The credits even specifically mention how Kerouac went on to write On The Road after this.  Okay...

After the opening sequence, we go back to just before Allen Ginsberg's heads off to Columbia University.  I was excited when I saw David Cross playing Ginsberg's father.  I thought maybe he'd lend some humor to the movie, but unfortunately this did not happen.  Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Ginsburg's mother, who is dealing with mental illness, but I found this subplot to be largely pointless as they didn't have any impact on the main story.  Maybe if Ginsberg had suffered from mental illness himself, it might have made more sense to include this, but it came across as unnecessary backstory.  After arriving at Columbia, Ginsberg meets Carr who introduces him to various members of the Beat Generation.  He begins to experiment with drugs and his own sexuality.

Another issue I had with the film was that I'm never made to feel why these people were important literary influences.  I didn't finish Kill Your Darlings wanting to know more about these guys.  The film features lots of scenes of Ginsberg writing and reading poetry, but the moments that worked best were the character moments, especially Carr's interactions with various members of the group.  They are inspired to create a "New Vision", and while there are several moments where you see them throwing out ideas, tearing up books, and working it out, what was the end result?  It wasn't clear to me.

As John Krokidas' feature directing debut goes, it's a decent effort.  I thought the pace dragged a little too much, and there were certain elements and characters that didn't add much to the story or were wasted entirely.  Part of the drag stems from how I mentioned that we begin with the ultimate climax of the film.  Lots of times this can work, but here it just made me antsy knowing I was going to sit through 100 minutes to get to a climax I already knew was coming.  Since this is a little-known story, spoiling how it turns out in the first five minutes was a mistake.  There's very little about the aftermath of this event, and it's all the lead up to it.

It's very well acted though.  Dane DeHaan was extremely charismatic as Lucien Carr, and it's one of those performances where he makes it easy to understand why people were drawn to him.  He plays off everyone well and it was interesting to see how manipulative he could be.  DeHaan's chemistry with Radcliffe is one of the strongest points of the film.  As for Radcliffe, if he wanted to distance himself from Harry Potter or make people start to forget about that part of his career, then he certainly accomplished that with a daring and earnest performance.  I think he even went "full gay."  It's bodes well for his future that he's willing to take risks like this, and it reminds me of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's earlier performance in Mysterious Skin.  Outside of wasting Cross, Leigh, and especially Elizabeth Olsen (an extreme waste), I found most of the performances to be good.

Kill Your Darlings is a stylish and well-acted story, but unfortunately meanders and suffers from lack of focus.  I didn't hate the film, it simply didn't work for me.  If you're someone who's a fan of the Beat Generation, or are interested in Daniel Radcliffe's career post-Potter, then you may get some value from watching it.  It's a rental at best.

2.5 (out of 5) Death Stars