THE 100 BEST WAR MOVIES: #39. Lone Survivor (2014)

 

               “Lone Survivor” is based on the best-seller by Mark Luttrell (and ghost-writer Patrick Robinson) and written and directed by Peter Berg (trying to get into Heaven after “Battleship”).  Luttrell was the only survivor of a four man SEAL recon unit that was part of Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan in 2007.  The ill-fated mission was to capture or kill a Taliban leader. The movie was filmed in New Mexico. It’s budget was $40 million and it made over $150 million. Luttrell moved in with Berg for a month when he was writing the screenplay. And Berg became the first civilian to imbed with a Navy SEAL team in Iraq.  

            The film starts strong with archival SEAL training footage running over the credits which indicates strong Pentagon support for the production.  This also dispenses with the normal training sequence common in movies like this.  This results in little character development, but the film is more about a quartet of brothers than about four individuals anyway.  As though the title is not enough of a giveaway, our first shot is of Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) being medevaced in terrible condition.  His narration sets the tone.  “There’s a storm inside us… an unrelenting desire to push yourself… into those cold dark corners where the bad things live….”

            Operation Red Wings is outlined efficiently using maps, slides, and even toy helicopters.  The target is a Taliban bigwig who is established as kill-worthy through a scene where he ruthlessly beheads a villager (and not with one clean cut).  The insertion is very “Black Hawk Down”ish.  (In fact BHD is this movie’s closest equivalent).  The environment is the opposite of Mogadishu, however.  Very mountainous and scenic - if it weren’t for the creepy foreboding.  SNAFU rears its ugly head with the lack of communications with their base.  Soon after, they are discovered by three goat-herders and its dilemma time.  The debate comes down to kill them so they can continue the mission to eliminate a high-value target or let them go because it would be a war crime that could put them on CNN and in Leavenworth (Luttrell’s position).  Lt. Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch) makes the call. 

            It does not take long for the movie to become a “last stand” scenario.  A large force of Afghanis hunt the four in the hillside forest.  Being true SEALs, our boys take the fight to the enemy and give much more than they take, but they still end up taking a lot.  All four suffer numerous wounds.  (Luttrell deals with them by packing them with dirt because that’s what real men do!)  The violence and action is amazing.  It is one of the best combat sequences ever filmed.  There are a couple of breathers fitted in for them men to talk like American warriors and for the audience to unclutch their arm rests.  At one point, they are blown off a cliff by an RPG and proceed to roll down the hillside in a shot that makes you respect stuntmen immensely.  One good roll deserves another as they actually voluntarily repeat the bone crushing feat soon after.  In the only LOL moment in an otherwise grim film, Luttrell ends his second trip face to face with a rattlesnake!  (A moment foreshadowed by a warning about poison snakes pre-mission.)  One bad thing about escaping by rolling down a cliff is it gives the enemy the high ground.  Only one of our heroes will make it out alive. And before you say that means three Americans will die, prepare to be shocked. Macho guy warning:  the movie closes with pictures of all the heroic dead with Peter Gabriel singing “Heroes”, so have your hankie ready.

ACTING:   A                 

ACTION:   A+  (9/10)                   

ACCURACY:  B            

PLOT:  A                         

REALISM:   B              

CINEMATOGRAPHY:    A+

SCORE:   A                 

 

SCENE:  the combat scene

QUOTE:  Marcus Luttrell:   [after finding his lost gun in the middle of the fight] See? God's looking out for us.

Michael Murphy:  If this is what happens when God is looking out for us, I'd hate to see Him pissed.

                “Lone Survivor” accomplishes what it sets out to do.  It is a tribute to the American participants.  Obviously, the Navy liked what it saw in the screenplay as the movie had significant military support.  Berg also had the complete support of the families of the four men.  Mission accomplished with a flair for the entertainment potential of the story.  The movie kicks ass for a significant length of its running time. I timed from the first gun shot to Luttrell hiding at 33 consecutive minutes!  It has more action than a vast majority of war films and is in BHD territory.  The violence is graphic and adrenalin-fueled.  However, the deaths of Murphy and Axelson dilute the Taliban bloodbath.  You don’t wallow like in some movies.  The movie is clearly pro-SEAL, but anti-war.

            Berg deserves a lot of credit for climbing out of that “Battleship” hole.  He worked hard to get everything right and the movie shows great craftsmanship.  There is a variety of cinematography that keeps us cinephiles happy.  Lots of hand-held, some POV, a little slo-mo, perhaps too many close-ups.  You definitely think you are with those guys.  Kudos to the music which is understated, but effective.  There are long stretches with no music, which I like.  The sound is also excellent.  Mostly of the gunfire and explosions variety.  I don’t usually mention make-up in my reviews of war movies, but Howard Berger and his crew used the autopsy records to get the details right for the wounds.  The dialogue is appropriate for Navy Seals.  There is not a lot of banter, but it’s not forced.  The comradeship and brotherhood are apparent.  The movie gets the military ethos right, but hammers it in a bit.

            One strength of the film is the acting is great. The quartet is up to what must have been a difficult shoot. You really care about them and there are some tearjerking deaths. The four actors went through a boot camp. The movie takes some time to humanize the four. On the other hand, the Taliban are uniformly evil, even to other Afghanis. The movie manages to put a face to the two lead baddies. Go head and hiss, but keep in mind the four Americans are foreigners in their country and are there to kill them.

                HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  As far as accuracy, the movie reminds me of “We Were Soldiers” except this is based on a memoir so you could question the source material.   I’m not going to go into the possible inaccuracies in the book right now. The fact is that Berg bought the rights to the book and had Luttrell as his technical adviser (he appears in the movie).  Does anyone suggest he should have told Luttrell that he thought he was lying and change the screenplay in his face?  One significant thing is that Berg reduced Luttrell’s disputed estimate of 80-200 enemy to a more realistic 50 or so.  (Imagine that, a director reducing the odds!)  The mission was as outlined.  The communications problems and the goat herders’ incident happened.  Based on my research, I can live with the debate as depicted.  The ensuing fire-fight was as close as one man’s recollection put on film can be expected to be.  The deaths of the three were vetted by the families.  The helicopter disaster was accurate although Luttrell did not actually witness it. 

            The movie goes off the historical path after the fighting ends.  Luttrell did not walk out, he crawled seven miles.  Luttrell’s rescue by Mohammad Gulab and his insistence on protecting his “guest” as part of the Afghani trait of Pashtunwalli is close, but there was no more excitement after that.  The ending battle was like the one in “We Were Soldiers”.  Crowd-pleasing, but the type of thing that makes discerning viewers say “I bet that didn’t happen” and sure enough…  The rescue was actually mundane and Luttrell was not at death’s door.  He did not flat-line.  Why does Hollywood always insist on putting a cherry on top?  The sundae was plenty good already.

            CONCLUSION:  “Lone Survivor” is a very good movie.  It has most of the attributes that I want in a war movie.  It tells a story that deserved to be told and it does it in an entertaining way.  It is reasonably accurate.  The combat is realistic and there is plenty of it.   The acting is stellar (especially Ben Foster), the cinematography is not pedestrian, the technical aspects are solid, and the plot is not an afterthought.  It’s a must see for every male, American war movie lover.

THE 100 BEST WAR MOVIES: #40. Das Boot (1981)

 

 “Das Boot” (“The Boat”) is a German submarine movie directed by Wolfgang Petersen.  Originally the movie was going to be made by John Sturges starring Robert Redford and then by Don Siegel starring Paul Newman.  Thankfully, both projects fell through.  It is based on the novel by Lothar-Gunther Buchheim.  Although fictional, Buchheim used his experience as a correspondent on U-96 on a tour in 1941.  The Werner (Herbert Gronemeyer) character is based on Buchheim.  Buchheim began as a technical adviser, but had a falling out with Petersen because of what Buchheim considered unrealistically enhanced dramatic license.  The movie took three years to produce (1979-81) and was the most expensive German film up to then.    It was released in 1981 at 150 minutes and then shown as a miniseries at 300 minutes.  The version I am reviewing is the definitive Director’s Cut which clocks in at 209 minutes.  The original version was a big hit in Germany and the U.S.  It was an even bigger critical success.  It was nominated for Academy Awards for Director, Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay (Petersen), Film Editing, Sound, and Sound Effects Editing.  Stunningly, it was not nominated for Foreign Film!

             The movie opens at La Rochelle, France in the autumn of 1941.  We are informed that the u-boat fleet is beginning to suffer heavy losses.  By the end of the war only 10,000 of 40,000 submariners will have survived the war.  So, don’t expect a feel-good movie. The Captain (Jurgen Prochnow), the Chief (Klaus Wennemann), and Werner arrive at the base and Werner gets his first taste of the submarine service when some of the drunken crewmen piss on their car as it passes by.  (I don’t mean taste literally.)  The enlisted are not the only ones “preparing” for their next tour, the officers are partying at a French cabaret.  The scene is reminiscent of a cinematic fighter squadron on a regular night except that these guys are going to be away from debauchery for a couple of months.  They party like there’s no tomorrow partly because they know that might be true.

 The next day the U-96 sets sail.  Werner is given a tour of the boat.  It is very crowded and narrow.  Spaces are filled with supplies, even one of the two latrines. We are introduced to the key members of the crew.  There are 48 men on board a boat that would have had 24 in peacetime.  The First Watch Officer (Hubertus Bengsch) is the only Nazi fanatic.  The rest of the officers are cynical and war-weary.  The Captain, in particular, makes biting remarks about the “braggarts” that run the government and to needle the “Hitler Youth leader” (the FWO) insists on singing “Tipperrary”. 

            The next twenty days are ones filled with boredom. This boredom switches to terror instantly when the boat is surprised by a British destroyer.  The sub dives below its maximum depth of 160 meters and withstands a depth charging.  There is no warning of the explosions for the crew or the audience. Later, they manage to torpedo three freighters, but then its payback time for the escorts.  The depth charging is much worse this time.  Leaks, flying bolts, a fire, and numerous close explosions cause extreme tension. If you are expecting a lot of sinkings, the movie is not about the glory days of the u-boat campaign. It is not an American WWII submarine movie. The sub could be labeled hard luck. Despite great leadership, it suffers from a lot of hardships. Besides the effective anti-submarine warfare tactics, the movie makes it clear that the other foe is the Atlantic Ocean. The film is far from a recruiting film for the u-boat force. This is not the “Top Gun” of German submarine movies.

ACTING:   A                 

ACTION:   C  (6/10)                   

ACCURACY:  N/A             

PLOT:  A                         

REALISM:   A               

CINEMATOGRAPHY:    A+

SCORE:   B  (not much)               

SCENE:  the burning tanker

QUOTE:  Captain:  They won't catch us this time! Not this time! They haven't spotted us! No, they're all snoring in their bunks! Or, you know what? They're drinking at the bar, celebrating our sinking! Not yet, my friends. Not yet!

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  Analyzing this movie for historical accuracy is problematic.  The film is based on a novel so it is hard to determine what in the novel is true.  The movie does follow the book closely which means the questions about accuracy focus on the book.  There was a U-96 and it was commanded by Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock for its first eight patrols.  He was the 6^th highest u-boat ace based on tonnage.  He won the Iron Cross.  The submarine was credited with sinking 27 ships in 11 patrols.  Buchheim (Werner in the movie) was a Navy correspondent who was embedded for propaganda purposes.  It appears that the patrol he based the book on was the 7^th one.  My research on that patrol shows that Buchheim enhanced the story quite a bit.  In fact, even if Buchheim used incidents from other patrols, it is still hard to find the incidents that appear in the book and in the movie.  The seventh patrol saw the sinking of only one freighter and one significant depth charging.  There was no Gibraltar incident on any of the patrols.  The u-boat sailed from St. Nazaire (the movie understandably used La Rochelle because the sub pens are intact there and were essential to the verisimilitude of the film).  It also returned to St. Nazaire, but not to the reception shown in the film.  U-96 was sunk under similar circumstances when the submarine pens at Wilhelmshaven were bombed in 1945. 

So, what could have happened?  It seems likely the submariners partied hard considering the u-boat service had the highest mortality rate of any service in WWII for any country.  Adm. Donitz did make a habit of seeing off the individual boats.  The depressed vibe may be a bit laid on, but autumn 1941 was the first nonhappy time for the u-boats.  In 1941, convoys became more effective and more escorts came into play.  Also, anti-submarine technology improved with the use of ASDIC (sonar).  The movie implies that the u-boat war was on a path downward from then on, but in reality there was to be a second “happy time” with the entry of the U.S.  The vibe in the movie is more appropriate for 1943 when the Battle of Atlantic was clearly lost.  It seems unlikely that the depth of depression and cynicism would have sunk that low by autumn 1941.

  The movie accurately reflects the fear the pinging of sonar caused for the crew.  By this stage of the war, Ultra was being used to reroute convoys away from wolf packs.  Of course the U-96 would not have been aware of this and the movie makes no allusion to the code-breaking.  The movie does make a point of depicting the use of the Enigma machine to decode messages from submarine command.  The u-boat crews were noted for being outspoken in their cynicism and the Captain evidences that.    As far as the Nazi on board, this stock character has been criticized, but it seems likely there would have been someone like him on board.  Actually, I would have thought there would have been more than one fanatic.    While the incidents in the movie can be questioned, the u-boat is as real as it can get.  The movie interior was an exact copy of a Type VII-C on display in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

CRITIQUE:  The effort that went into this movie is amazing.  It reminds me of “Master and Commander”.  I already mentioned the interior, but there were also several models that were used for exterior scenes.  One was an eleven foot long model used for the ocean storms.  It was hollow and driven by a man laying inside on his stomach.  The same model was borrowed by Spielberg for “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.  There were dolls on the tower that were moved by remote control.  For the depth charge scenes, the interior mockup was on a hydraulic apparatus called a gimbal that allowed for realistic (even dangerous) hurling of bodies and objects.  The filming in this tight environment is incredible.  A special version of the steadicam was developed by cinematographer Jost Vacano who wore padding so he could move and not be hurt by encounters with the walls and hatchways.  One of the great war movie shots is when the crew rushes to the bow of the boat to speed the crash dive.   It is done in one continuous shot with no cuts.  The cinematography overall is great.  In the opening scene in the Bar Royal, Vacano has a long shot where the camera moves around the room to catch the revelry. 
               The acting matches the technical virtuousity.  The cast was relatively unknown even in Germany.  Most went on to good careers.  Prochnow is perfect as the Captain and Wennemann matches him as the Chief.  Gronemeyer is appropriately awed, wide-eyed, and terrorized by his experiences as the neophyte Werner.  Erwin Leder makes a good impression as Johann.  It was his first acting role and you won’t be able to forget his face.    The entire cast was serious about making the picture special.  They all agreed to avoid sunlight during the production to get the sallow look.  The movie was shot in sequence so the men’s beards reflected time at sea.  The actors went through a type of boot camp so they could maneuver through the cramped interior smoothly.

There have been many submarine movies.  What makes “Das Boot” special is the way it gets the life of the submariners right.  The sailors behave as you would expect a German u-boat crew to behave.  Some veterans took umbrage with the crude language, but that seems revisionist and the book (by an ex-submariner) is even cruder.  No movie has depicted life on a WWII submarine better.  Any submarine.  At screenings in America, when the statistic of 30,000 German submariners dying appeared on the screen, the audience applauded.  By the end of the film, few rejoiced in the tragic exemplification of that stat.  You care about these men.  They are not the enemy.  Speaking of which, the movie does not cut to the anti-submariners.  U-96’s foes are faceless.
            The plot is linear and somewhat episodic.  It builds nicely to its overt anti-war message.  It is not perfect, however.  The depth chargings are a bit repetitive with each topping the last.  By the end of the movie, the boat has had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at it.  The movie cannot escape some of the clichés submarine movies are noted for.  The sub has to go below “hull crush depth” and yet the hull is not crushed.  The sub withstands not one, but three depth chargings with the depth charges exploding alongside the sub.  Unrealistically close, by the way.  It does avoid several other tropes.  There is no command conflict.  The captain is no Ahab hunting his white whale.  Noone is left on deck during a crash dive and no debris and oil are released to fool the hunters.  Most importantly, the sub is on a routine patrol.  No special mission.

CONCLUSION:  “Das Boot” is a very good movie, but it is not great.  I have to admit that in my opinion it is slightly overrated.  In the worthy attempt to be firmly anti-war, it has a narrative arc that is consistently downward.  Each episode is more depressing than the last until the twist of the ending.  In my opinion, the plot would have been more effective as a roller coaster ride than a downward spiral.  This does conform to the novel, but movies have the right to improve on their sources.  “Das Boot” would have been better if it had included some of the thrills of u-boat combat.  There is too much prey and not enough predator.  The torpedoing of the three enemy ships is given short shrift. The three depth chargings are not. Still, in spite of those quibbles, it is still the best submarine war movie ever made. And it is unique in depicting life on a German submarine.