For those of you who don't know the story or can't infer an idea from the tittle; a four man SEAL team consisting of Matt Axelson, Mike Murphy, Danny Dietz, and Marcus Luttrell was inserted into Kunar Province, Afghanistan. The SEAL team was tasked with capturing or killing a guy named Ahmad Shah, a senior Taliban leader. Now, you gotta understand, this Shah guy was a pretty evil dude, his main mission in life was to kill as many Americans as he possibly could, hence the four man SEAL team hot on his trail. But I digress. The SEALs were inserted into the mountains and hiked up to just outside of the village where Shah was known to be. They set up comms and began surveillance on Shah. After sitting on the mountain side for a while, the Team was compromised by three goat herders. Now the SEALs had an incredibly tough decision: They could kill 'em right then and there, hide the bodies and run; they could hog tie em, leave em and run; or they could turn them loose and run. It's important to note here that they knew these guys had ties to the Taliban and would definitely rat them out. But because of the media and fear of being buried under the jail for killing some "innocent" goat herders they decided they would turn em loose and run for the hills, literally. Of course, as soon as those darn goat herders got loose they ran straight to the Taliban crying "Americans!". From here a bad day turned worse, dang Murphy and his stupid law ( For those of you who don't know see Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, catastrophically). So in short the Taliban catch up with our SEALs and there was a massive firefight. Here the movie does the book justice, granted, it was a little more tame than the book but I understand why. I had a hard time watching it, and teared up a couple of times watching it. Murph's sacrifice for the rescue phone call, and the fact that he ended the call with " Thank You" through the gunfire and ultimately his own death is truly inspiring and heart wrenching. Another scene that's gut wrenching is Axe's death. Talk about going out like a lion. The man had sustained serious gunshot wounds including a head wound, and he crawls away with his pistol fighting like a lion, right up till the end. There was also some symbolism to mention; when the first rescue helicopter gets shot down, also incredibly hard to watch, Marcus is on the Helicopter in the movie. In many interviews Marcus talks about part of him dying on the mountain side that day, and this is a symbol of that. To sum it up though, Marcus survives and is taken in by a group of villagers led by Mohammad Gulab and protected. This is due to an old tribal tradition of Pashtunwali, which basically means that once these people decide to take you in, they fight for you to the death of every last one of them. Because of these brave villagers who stood up to the Taliban, Marcus was able to survive and be rescued.
The movie does the story justice, and the actors did a heck of a job portraying these great heroes. Content-wise the movie is very accurate, that means a lot of harsh language, so if you do plan on going and have kids/ younger siblings you may want to leave them at home. However, I do recommend that everyone sees this movie and reads the book at least once. It puts a lot of things in perspective and shows what true perseverance in the face of adversity looks like.
On that note I would like to say thank you to all the brave men and women who serve or have served, You are the reason that I can sit here and right this, and the reason we have the freedoms we do. So again THANK YOU!!
At this point I want to talk about something that has recently come up in relation to the movie. An LA weekly writer decided that this movie came down to "Brown people bad" "white people good" but I guess she didn't read the story or actually watched the movie, because Gulab was a "Brown" person and he saved Marcus' life. But I guess she missed that part. She also goes on to say that the number of fighters wasn't close to 200 but more close to 10. Wait what? you mean to tell me that three out of four of some of America's most highly trained warriors fell at the hands of 10 Taliban fighters. Yeah, I'm not buying that either. I'll stick with Luttrell's story and numbers because, well, he was actually there. And by the way if you haven't "been there and done that" why would you think you have the right to criticize these men. In the (censored) words of Mark Wahlberg : " How Dare You."
You can read her very ignorant review here :http://www.laweekly.com/2013-12-26/film-tv/lone-survivor-mark-wahlberg-review/
And feel free to leave me comments on subjects to write about! I'm open to suggestions.
Thanks for following my ramblings,
Tucker
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