# Osage's Take On...LONE SURVIVOR (Blu-ray; Universal)



## Osage_Winter (Apr 8, 2010)

[img]http://cdn.wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/lone-survivor-blu-ray-cover-93.jpg[/img]*Releasing/Participating Studio(s): Universal
Disc/Transfer Information: Region A; 50GB Blu-ray Disc 1080p High Definition 2.40:1 (Original Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1)
Video Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Rating: R
Running Time: 121 Minutes
Tested Audio Track: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Director: Peter Berg
Starring Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, Alexander Ludwig, Emile Hirsch, Eric Bana


BASED ON TRUE ACTS OF COURAGE.


PLOT ANALYSIS:*

The first time I was exposed to Peter Berg, then solely an actor, was when he appeared in Wes Craven’s little under-the-radar serial killer flick _Shocker_, a little gem of a horror film that found a legion of underground fans in its video incarnations. From there, Berg popped up in various films here and there, including a pretty decent role as one of the corrupt NYC cops in _Cop Land_ where he starred alongside Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta and Sylvester Stallone. Berg then got his feet wet in directing, going on to make – amongst a bevy of other films – _Battleship_ and now _Lone Survivor_, which ended up visually shocking me and rocking my inner core like _Black Hawk Down_ or even _Saving Private Ryan_ never managed to do…and those were some pretty savage studies in the horrors and nightmare-ish elements of war. Indeed, _Lone Survivor_ feels like a modern-day _Black Hawk Down_ (and not just because Eric Bana starred in both) what with its build up to the mission that goes horribly wrong for elite U.S. soldiers and the subsequent loss of life, if not on such a mass scale as in _Black Hawk_; as I described it after seeing it, this was almost a _Black Hawk Down_ set amidst the quasi-modern Middle East terrorist epidemic America seems to be facing post-September 11 as compared to the Ridley Scott film’s look at what went wrong in Mogadishu during the Clinton era. Like most “based on true story” projects, I have to wonder just how much of what Berg portrays here was quite as bloody, graphic and downright disturbing in certain places as what truly happened to this group of Navy SEALs; I am interested enough to do some research on my own about it, as I was with _Black Hawk Down_.

_Lone Survivor_ is supposedly based on the failed mission by the U.S. dubbed “Operation Red Wings” in June of 2005 when SEALs were tasked to take out Taliban leader Ahmad Shah. We get some good, honest performances from the likes of Mark Wahlberg, who ends up being the titular “lone survivor” of the SEAL team, plus Ben Foster (who I still think reached his apex of acting when he played that nutty drifter and vampire sympathizer in _30 Days of Night_) and Eric Bana, who plays the SEAL team commander. Berg also teams up again with actor Taylor Kitsch, the rather annoying a-hole from _Battleship_ that ends up winning the heart of uber-hot and delicious Brooklyn Decker, who here portrays the SEAL team leader…and who meets a rather horrific death at the hands of Taliban mercenaries. Wahlberg portrays Marcus Luttrell, Kitsch portrays Michael Murphy, Emile Hirsch portrays Danny Dietz, Foster portrays Matt “Axe” Axelson and Bana plays Erik Kristensen. We even get a small cameo by the director Peter Berg himself during a brief sequence inside the SEAL rec room before they go on their mission.

Berg opens _Lone Survivor_ with that stereotypical quasi-flashback sequence, depicting Wahlberg’s Luttrell already injured and being flown out of hostile Middle Eastern territory via medical chopper…a scene that, obviously, takes place at the end of this story. The only SEAL member to survive the rogue and vicious attack by Taliban members on the ground, Luttrell clings to life after what has happened to him over the past few days. This SEAL team is after Taliban leader Ahmad Shah, with orders to capture or kill him by Washington in late June of 2005. Due to a ridiculously unforeseen error, the team ends up stepping foot into hell on Earth, cut off from all communications because of their location in the mountains and running out of ammo quickly. As I said before – and what I have an issue with when it comes to all these kinds of “based on a true story” films – I am uncertain just how accurate Berg was here with regard to the real story that inspired his picture…I don’t recall hearing about this botched attempt to capture this Taliban leader, and I watch a lot of CNN, Fox News and HLN. However, back in ’05, I was reeling from losing my dad in the hospital after being very sick for a while and some other anomalies so it is possible I just never picked up on the news tidbit if there was one. That said, based on what Berg claims these men went through, it seems odd to me that this didn’t receive more coverage – the conditions they were in, the mounting pressure from being surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of armed Taliban soldiers, the non-stop gunfire they took…this is something that would have been documented in some length by the media. 

As I also mentioned, Peter Berg’s _Lone Survivor_ felt very much like _Black Hawk Down_ even in structural elements – the comradery between the SEALs before they leave for their mission, their unmoving reluctance to even believe it was a dangerous footing, the “being drastically outnumbered” factor when enemy forces surround them and, ultimately, the whole “Americans are being brutally gunned down by a seemingly superior adversary” angle. The men are dropped into the hot zone where it’s believed Shah (played by Yousef Azami) are terrorizing villagers and harboring Taliban terrorists. The terrain is very U.S. Northwest-esque, with groupings of pine trees all over the mountains and pockets of forest-like linings. The group sets up surveillance equipment and prepare their weapons while completing recon of the village below, until they identify their target and his subordinates. 

Things go terribly wrong when the men fall asleep in alternating shifts only to be awoken by the sound of approaching footsteps and voices. Alas, two Middle Eastern boys and an old man stumble upon the group of U.S. SEALs hiding in the mountain above the village below when they are herding their group of goats. The SEALs have no choice but to restrain the group and figure out what to do with them – and the decision isn’t an easy one because if they are left to run off and go free, they will undoubtedly tell Shah and his soldiers, inviting a massive ambush for the outnumbered SEALs, but if they kill them it will be an act of cruelty because they would be unarmed prisoners. The tension mounts as the group of men argue amongst one another over what to do with these three; some are in favor of killing them because of the Middle Easterners’ “hatred of Americans” while some want to just tie them to trees and leave them. Commanding officer Michael Murphy (Kitsch) struggles with the decision until the prisoners are ultimately left to run back down to the village. From there, the SEALs’ day goes from bad to worse as an all-out ambush ensues, the Taliban soldiers attacking from seemingly every angle and taking advantage of the Americans’ small numbers.

For the remainder of the film, director Berg portrays the evils and horrors of combat in ways difficult to explain until you’ve been in it or have seen it on screen – one by one, each member of the SEAL team is horrifically injured by surrounding and heavily-armed Taliban members, some of the SEALs meeting their doom in slow and agonizing ways. Communications specialist Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) is shot to the point his lungs collapse even though he attempts to keep conscious while team leader Murphy attempts to go back up a mountain the SEALs just tumbled down head-first to attempt to rescue him. Eventually, Murphy attempts to get communications back up – which have been dead since the ambush because of the location the men are in on this mountain, so Kristensen and headquarters have no way of knowing where the SEALs are exactly – by climbing to the top of a mountain’s open ridge, where he’s ambushed by Taliban behind him with their automatic weapons and rockets. Much of this feels like a horrific synergy of elements from _Platoon, Black Hawk Down_ and other military-oriented films that depict American soldiers being torn to shreds by an enemy deemed “easy to conquer;” still, these sequences in _Lone Survivor_ got difficult to watch. I can still sit through _Black Hawk Down_ – and I own the Superbit DVD of the title and watch it regularly – even with its depictions of American soldiers having body parts blown off or rockets going through their bodies…but there was something much more disturbing about the way the soldiers lose their lives as seen in Peter Berg’s _Lone Survivor_. Perhaps it was the way in which each SEAL member is seemingly stalked and hunted by the Taliban, all of whom are dead-set on killing each and every American on their turf, or the slow and methodical way they are picked off by relentless machine gun fire and shoulder-fired rockets…but this film was draining in its second half.

Particularly difficult to watch were the sequences involving the SEAL members cascading down ridiculously steep mountainsides – voluntarily – in order to escape approaching Taliban soldiers in droves who shower them with machine gun ammo; they do this not once but quite a few more times as they attempt to get lower and lower on the mountain in an attempt to outrun the approaching enemy who knows this terrain like the backs of their hands. The way in which each of their bodies smash, slam and bang against jagged mountain edges, trees, rocks and other obstacles before landing with horrifically loud thuds, suggesting body parts have been broken and shredded, were jarring in a way I haven’t experienced in quite some time watching Hollywood spectacles…but perhaps even more incredible was the way in which the SEALs blow past these incidents to continue moving forward, even with broken bones, collapsed lungs, crushed pelvises and massive wallops of blinding, incomprehensible pain. Suddenly, I understood why they go through all that training when entering the elite SEAL program…

As the film comes to a close, it is Mark Wahlberg’s Marcus Luttrell character who is left out of his entire SEAL division, eventually coming to a stream where he drinks in dire thirst and is confronted by an Arabic-speaking family that takes him to their home for protection; indeed, this appears to be a family of a village that has resisted the Taliban and have been fighting against them. As they help Luttrell heal and feed him, the Taliban army descends upon the village, apparently looking for the lone American they know has come here. The villagers continue resisting the threatening Taliban leaders, to the point Luttrell is dragged outside and nearly loses his head by decapitation before the man who took him in fires his machine gun in protest and demand the Taliban leave the village. I would have to do some more research in order to learn how much of this actually took place after the other SEALs were killed – I don’t know how many, if any, liberties were taken by Berg and his production crew with regard to depicting Luttrell in his protected surroundings in this final act of the film.

_Lone Survivor_ was an emotionally draining experience, making it difficult to recommend as a buy for repeated viewings. It is a somewhat entertaining rental, but between the heavy vulgarity used and graphic displays of violence and sheer war horror, I can’t recommend this if you have kids and they’re in the room. So far as a “based on true events” project goes, it is definitely interesting, compelling material that I would like to find out some more about. All of the key players seem to act their hearts out for the most part, giving us a sense of what the team coda must be like amongst Navy SEALs during their hardest operations. From Wahlberg to Foster and from Kitsch to Bana, everyone here seems to do their best with what they’re given.

[img]http://www.joblo.com/newsimages1/lone-survivor-review-2.jpg[/img]*VIDEO QUALITY ANALYSIS: HOW DID THE DISC LOOK?*

Wow. We have a stunner here, audio and video wise, with Universal’s Blu-ray release of _Lone Survivor_. From the sheer, eye-opening amounts of clarity and detail to the breathtaking sense of scope and involvement, this 1080p 50GB encode looked spectacular. Some reviews have spoken of “hints of banding” in a few shots but I didn’t really pick up on them on my display; the high-definition digital photography used by Berg and his crew brings the most miniscule of textures to the forefront, making for one awesome-looking Blu-ray transfer. While the physical look of the film lacks some organic components of raw film stock due to the digital nature of the presentation, the ridiculous amounts of detail and clarity more than make up for it. 

The terrain of Afghanistan – which was actually shot in the United States, New Mexico to be exact – depicted in the sequences involving the SEALs and their mission is rendered with a remarkable, jaw-dropping sense of precision and clarity, bringing every pore on the soldiers’ faces, rock, pebble, tree branch and grain of sand to startling life. There is a sense that the viewer is actually _in_ the film transpiring in front of him or her – what high-definition was always supposed to do (you know, that elusive “looking out a window” effect) – and I can only imagine how this played on much larger screens as mine. This yielded a sense that one could just reach out and touch the characters and textures being presented onscreen; once the massive bloody injuries begin showing up on the SEAL members’ faces, the transfer gets even more realistically jarring in terms of shocking detail, exhibiting those wounds with a sense of clarity that becomes downright disturbing (case in point: Watch for a sequence depicting Ben Foster’s character’s eye which has been severely injured and horrifically sealed shut from the wound).

Skin tones appeared accurate throughout without any sense of over-saturation or bleeding – look to Berg’s _Battleship_ on Blu-ray for a good example of uber-coating a film with sunburned hues – while black levels stayed rich without, from what I could recall, any shadow crush. Indeed, this was near-reference quality video for the format from beginning to end. 







[img]http://www.breitbart.com/mediaserver/1EE097B7CF4E454D9250282584A69E7B.jpg[/img]*AUDIO QUALITY ANALYSIS: HOW DID THE DISC SOUND?*

Nearly just as impressive, _Lone Survivor_’s DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack in 5.1 was a shining, vivid example of audio done right for a war film – there is a startling sense of ridiculous clarity and sharpness to this mix, one that has to be heard to be believed. Explosions, helicopter flyovers, gunfire, rockets and screams of pain were rendered in an aggressive, clear, sharp-as-a-tack fashion here without any blanketing of the audio or related issues…something that was very refreshing to me after hearing more than a few rather disappointing Master Audio tracks.

The whole mix sounded airy, open, spacious and massive especially during the battle sequences; as SEAL gunfire mixes with that of the approaching Taliban forces, the track explodes into a wild array of sonic cues that truly envelop, even moving beyond the award-winning sound design of _Black Hawk Down_. Does it reach the level that the opening Omaha Beach scene in _Saving Private Ryan_ exhibits? Not quite sure…but if not, it is sure close. What struck me most heavily was the way in which the gunfire and even empty shell casings hitting the ground came across in such a clear, realistic fashion – I mean, it actually _sounded_ like the Taliban were fighting the SEALs in my living room. Bass/LFE was tight and controlled if not overtly thick and walloping, but was appropriately measured for the accompanying explosion scenes following a rocket launch or other attack; surrounds came alive with the dizzying bombardment of gunfire, bullet pings, off-in-the-distance shouts and weaponry sounds and much more. The whole track was engaging, surrounding and aggressive, putting it up there for high marks with the video transfer. 












[img]http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/lone-survivor-3-620x400.jpg[/img] *FINAL THOUGHTS:* 

While emotionally draining, _Lone Survivor_, however much of it is based in actual truth, is a good example of the modern warfare genre. Because it gets so harrowing after a while in the film’s second half, depicting each SEAL member succumbing to his particular horrific injuries at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan, I simply cannot see this as being good for repeat viewings, personally. Of course, your mileage may vary, so let me know if you agree or disagree with my findings.


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## Osage_Winter (Apr 8, 2010)

Edits made to review for consistency; thank you. :T


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## B- one (Jan 13, 2013)

Hey I got to watch this one before your spot on review O. But I plan on watching it again. The audio was awesome but the bad guys sure seemed to have a lot of "RPGs".( maybe Hollywood) My brother recently retired from the service more of a pencil pusher but they all face danger as a month before he got out there was an attack on there base he was injured but the solider directly behind him and others were not as lucky. On a lighter note great review, and hopefully I like Robocop more than you did.


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## Osage_Winter (Apr 8, 2010)

B- one said:


> Hey I got to watch this one before your spot on review O. But I plan on watching it again. The audio was awesome but the bad guys sure seemed to have a lot of "RPGs".( maybe Hollywood) My brother recently retired from the service more of a pencil pusher but they all face danger as a month before he got out there was an attack on there base he was injured but the solider directly behind him and others were not as lucky. On a lighter note great review, and hopefully I like Robocop more than you did.


Hey Bran!

Thanks for the input and thoughts, my friend; wow, that is too bad about your brother...how badly was he injured? Is he okay for the most part? I salute him and all the brave men and women who risk their lives -- pencil pushers or not -- for the sake of our way of life...:T

Thank you for your kind words about the review; and yes please let me know what you thought of RoboCop if you see it. :T


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## B- one (Jan 13, 2013)

Osage_Winter said:


> Hey Bran! Thanks for the input and thoughts, my friend; wow, that is too bad about your brother...how badly was he injured? Is he okay for the most part? I salute him and all the brave men and women who risk their lives -- pencil pushers or not -- for the sake of our way of life...:T Thank you for your kind words about the review; and yes please let me know what you thought of RoboCop if you see it. :T


He only got his forearm messed up very lucky and it still works fine. I'm sure like most of our service people they all have there crosses to bear for sure. We will make sure to watch Robocop before Erased! Here's a updated pic of unwatched movies.


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## JBrax (Oct 13, 2011)

Wow, that's quite an impressive stack of unwatched movies! American Hustle in there is a must watch!


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## B- one (Jan 13, 2013)

JBrax said:


> Wow, that's quite an impressive stack of unwatched movies! American Hustle in there is a must watch!


I plan on watching them all eventually! Only time will tell we have been watching way to much Netflix lately.


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## Osage_Winter (Apr 8, 2010)

B- one said:


> He only got his forearm messed up very lucky and it still works fine. I'm sure like most of our service people they all have there crosses to bear for sure. We will make sure to watch Robocop before Erased! Here's a updated pic of unwatched movies.


I'm glad about your bro...

Wow...now your unwatched pile is just getting out of hand...:rant: :coocoo: :rolleyesno: :bigsmile:


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## Osage_Winter (Apr 8, 2010)

B- one said:


> we have been watching way to much Netflix lately.


No no no...

*Physical media!! Physical media!!*


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## B- one (Jan 13, 2013)

Osage_Winter said:


> No no no... Physical media!! Physical media!!


Not movies at least just tv shows I'm cheap we only get one channel. There are a lot of great shows right now Lost with the wife, Longmire if not.


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## Osage_Winter (Apr 8, 2010)

B- one said:


> Not movies at least just tv shows I'm cheap we only get one channel. There are a lot of great shows right now Lost with the wife, Longmire if not.


Oh...

Are you saying you only stream for TV shows? If so, I'll let you off da hook for that...:nono:


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## asere (Dec 7, 2011)

I own this movie and am glad I bought it.
I don't see how you can take so many rounds, fall onto boulders and survive.
Great story, visuals and audio.


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## Osage_Winter (Apr 8, 2010)

asere said:


> I own this movie and am glad I bought it.
> I don't see how you can take so many rounds, fall onto boulders and survive.
> Great story, visuals and audio.


Hey asere,

Thanks for joinin' the discussion! Indeed, I too was watching it with my wife and we were like "Whaaaat? How can they hit those rocks and trees so hard and actually keep going?" 

As you probably saw in the audio and video analysis section of the review, I agree with you about the picture and sound...:T


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## Mike Edwards (Mar 10, 2011)

asere said:


> I own this movie and am glad I bought it.
> I don't see how you can take so many rounds, fall onto boulders and survive.
> Great story, visuals and audio.


the will to survive is incredible when it kicks in.


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