normally i couldn't give less of a shit about whether a not a film is 'historically accurate', but if you look up the wikipedia article for lone survivor, it immediately becomes apparent that both the author of the book and peter berg as a director are totally invested in making this story into a ludicrous call of duty-esque fantasy where these hardened military bros say shit like 'I AM THE REAPER' to their enemies and get hit by a half-dozen bullets and fall down two mile-long cliffs before their bodies finally give up the ghost. yeah, it's a movie, i get it, everything is inherently fictional, whatever, but when berg is trying to go for this tactical weighty realism, it makes absolutely zero sense to further embellish an already-embellished story. berg is obviously trying to operate in the research-heavy tradition of someone like michael mann, as berg brought on a bunch of navy SEALs as technical advisors to this film and hung out with the damn guys for a month in iraq while writing the screenplay, and all of that makes it that much more confusing as to why this has ended up being so jingoistic and typical. it's not even the fun crazy jingoism of a madman like michael bay, it's the boring jingoism of a 'support the troops' bumper sticker on the back of a minivan. i can forgive these military films for their usual right-wing unilateralist bullshit, whatever, i expect it, but boring is boring, and boring sucks.
