Lone Survivor

Directed by Peter Berg

(R)

**

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Peter Berg’s bracing new combat film is “not for the faint of heart,” said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. A dramatization of one of the U.S. military’s costliest missions in Afghanistan, it achieves, “with a gruesome energy,” a remarkably realistic sense of what it must be like to be caught in a prolonged firefight. Of the 20 Americans who participated in the 2005 mission and subsequent rescue attempt, only one survived, and the director’s desire to honor those men’s sacrifice “can be felt in every frame.” The opening shots of the fighters’ training tilt toward being jingoistic, said Dana Stevens in Slate.com. But the performances of Mark Wahlberg and his three closest comrades in arms prove “understated and superb,” and once the movie moves to the battlefield, no viewer could sit through the onslaught “without being sickened by the carnage.” Unfortunately, we never learn much of anything about the characters, said Stephen Whitty in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. The real heroes’ courage is “worth celebrating, sure—but even more, it’s worth truly dramatizing, which requires some thought and dialogue.”