The strange hate for ‘Lone Survivor’

The movie Lone Survivor didnt get any Oscar nominations, but perhaps it shouldve been nominated for Most Unlikely Politically Incorrect Picture of the Year.

Its based on the true story of a mission in Afghanistan that goes disastrously wrong. A four-man team of Navy SEALs hunting down a Taliban commander is stumbled upon by a couple of goatherds in the mountains of Kunar province. Deciding to let them go, even though it will compromise them, the SEALs are subsequently outnumbered in a fierce firefight. Three are killed, and a Chinook helicopter attempting to relieve them is downed, killing another 16 Americans. The only survivor is a SEAL named Marcus Luttrell, who is played by Mark Wahlberg and wrote a book about the mission.

None of this is remotely controversial material. How could anyone be offended by a movie about a Navy SEAL fighting with everything he has to save himself and his buddies and improbably surviving an epic ordeal? Yet the brickbats have been flying from the snotty left: Propaganda. Simplistic. Racist.

Lone Survivor has run up against part of the culture that cant stand the most straightforward depictions of American heroism and the warrior ethic.

A reviewer in The Atlantic worries that movies like Lone Survivor resemble multimillion-dollar recruitment videos tools of military indoctrination geared toward the young and the impressionable.

Theres no doubt that the SEALs are portrayed as noble and heroic, for good reason: They were. But if this is a recruitment film, it isnt of the sign up and see the world variety. The implicit message is that if you become a SEAL, you, too, can be faced with excruciating life-and-death decisions in hostile territory. You, too, can fight a battle while falling down a mountain. You, too, can get shot up and killed.

A writer in Salon complains that the targeted Taliban commander is presented as a terrible guy, and we dont learn enough about the Taliban fighters attacking the SEALs, or as he calls them, some dudes from an Afghan village about whom we know nothing. Yes, if only we knew whether or not the Taliban commander, Ahmad Shah, had a troubled upbringing, that would change everything.

Perhaps the Taliban version of the movie could present fuller, more sympathetic portraits of its fighters seeking to plunge their country into renewed medieval darkness if, that is, the Taliban believed in movies.

In perhaps the most preposterous critique, a critic in LA Weekly says the attitude of the SEALs in the movie is Brown people bad, American people good. What a stupid smear. The proximate cause of the impossible situation of the SEALs is precisely their decision to let a few unarmed brown people go. Besides, not all brown people in the film are bad. Some of them are awe-inspiringly merciful and brave. Of course, the main thrust of the Talibans war is against other brown people, whom they intimidate and kill in their quest to dominate.

It is certainly true that Lone Survivor is not Fellini. What it lacks in dialogue, it makes up for in explosions and gunfire. It is about as subtle as an RPG round. But it captures something important: the otherworldly fearlessness and grit of our best fighters.

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The strange hate for ‘Lone Survivor’