Broadly speaking, Hollywood war movies since the Reagan era tend to fall into three camps: bloody fantasies, a la the Rambo series, that center on lone, superhuman warrior-heroes; relatively bloodless spectacles in the vein of Top Gun, showcasing the state-of-the-art technology developed by the U.S. military-industrial complex; and artful blockbusters, like Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, that feature immersive re-creations of combat and seem designed to appeal to both prowar and antiwar viewers. The most interesting thing about Lone Survivor, a Hollywood war movie opening in Chicago this weekend, is that it doesn’t really fit in any of these subgenres. Writer-director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, Hancock) seems to have taken cues from such 1940s ensemble action dramas as Howard Hawks’s Air Force (1943) and William Wellman’s The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), movies that aren’t about war so much as the camaraderie, sacrifice, and thankless work that characterize life in the armed forces.
In the wake of such recent documentaries as Standard Operating Procedure and The Invisible War, Berg’s idealized portrait of the U.S. armed forces might strain credibility for some viewers. It’s worth noting, though, that his ideal soldier couldn’t be any more different from Sylvester Stallone’s. The characters here are sensitive and cooperative, motivated foremost by a sense of duty. Berg emphasizes this ideal through his casting of Hirsch and Ben Foster, actors associated with serious and independent movies rather than action fare. His message seems to be that anyone can be a soldier, regardless of whether they conform to the macho stereotype. (Berg’s last film, the relatively impersonal Battleship, also delivered that message, making a hero of a legless veteran in physical therapy.)
Directed by Peter Berg
