![\"Lone](\"https:\/\/external-content.duckduckgo.com\/iu\/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newdvdreleasedates.com%2Fimages%2Fposters%2Flarge%2Flone-survivor-2013-06.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=b70a1cf0f3008687444bb5d8906f9d4450ce6943ac043f1e745f3a08f8250199\")
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Lone Survivor<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(2013)<\/p>\n We’ve seen this before: young, fun-loving soldiers clash with their superiors before they’re assigned a dangerous mission. \u00a0The mission will go\u00a0well until an unexpected snafu puts them in danger, killing most of them. One of them will wax poetically about their families. One of them will make a heroic sacrifice. If the movie’s third act drags, a flashback will show one of them has a difficult home life (a cheating girlfriend or a domineering, military father).<\/p>\n Mark Walhberg rose to fame as the younger brother of Donnie from NKOTB<\/a>, had a number one hit<\/a>\u00a0with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch<\/a>, a successful career as a\u00a0Calvin Klein<\/a>\u00a0underwear model, and now works as an action move star \/ semi-respectable actor. Amazingly, we live in a world where Marky Mark can get\u00a0an Oscar nomination<\/a>, but Richard Gere, Jeff Daniels, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Donald Sutherland, and Edward G. Robinson cannot.<\/p>\n From\u00a0Tim Riggins<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Battleship<\/em>\u00a0(2012), Taylor Kitsch owes his career to Peter Berg and while he’s certainly charismatic, I’m not sold on his ability to carry a non-action oriented film. \u00a0Savages<\/em> (2012) was a mess and didn’t help to assuage these concerns.<\/p>\n Emile Hirsch may be a great actor, but he’s not given anything to distinguish himself here, hopefully his upcoming John Belushi biopic will provide him with a suitable platform to showcase his talent.<\/p>\n Friday Night Lights<\/a><\/em>\u00a0proved Peter Berg is capable of creating compelling and original characters, but here he forgets the first rule of filmmaking: the audience has to give a shit about what happens to these people.\u00a0Battleship<\/em> (2012) and\u00a0Lone Survivor<\/em> (2013) are dazzling films, but I can’t remember a single character because I didn’t care about any of them.<\/p>\n Occasionally, a film like\u00a0Grand Illusion\u00a0<\/em>(1939),\u00a0The Best Years of Our Lives <\/em>(1946), or\u00a0Saving Private Ryan<\/em> (1998) will transcend the war genre, but this boring, genre film did not.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Raid: Redemption<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2011)<\/p>\n A lot of people like this move, but I’m not one of them.<\/p>\n It’s ostensibly about a raid on a Jakartan slum, but it doesn’t matter because the director, Gareth Evans, decided action and elaborate set pieces were more important than character development.<\/p>\n There are better movies, with better fight scenes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Force of Evil<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(1948)<\/p>\n Joe Morse (John Garfield) is a lawyer on the take for Tucker, a powerful gangster who wants to eliminate his competition in the\u00a0numbers game<\/a>\u00a0including\u00a0Joe’s brother, Leo.<\/p>\n This old-fashioned potboiler is heavy on archetypes featuring family rivalry, betrayal, and competing loyalties.<\/p>\n Director Abraham Polonsky refused to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee<\/a>\u00a0and was blacklisted for the rest of his career. Still bitter, when Elia Kazan (who did testify to the committee) was honored with an Honorary Academy Award<\/a>, Polonksy publicly wished someone would shoot him onstage.<\/p>\n John Garfield was also blacklisted for refusing to testify, and sadly, died at thirty-nine from a heart attack, likely exacerbated by the stress of his vanishing career.<\/p>\n There were better gangster movies before and after, but this movie’s combination of poetical imagery and nuggets of philosophy elevate a story of crime and corruption to art, setting the stage for beloved classics like The Godfather<\/em>\u00a0(1972) and\u00a0Goodfellas<\/em>\u00a0(1990).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lone Survivor\u00a0(2013) We’ve seen this before: young, fun-loving soldiers clash with their superiors before they’re assigned a dangerous mission. \u00a0The mission will go\u00a0well until an unexpected snafu puts them in danger, killing most of them. One of them will wax poetically about their families. One of them will make a heroic sacrifice. If the… Continue reading The lone force of evil<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1055,1052,1054,508,510,1048,1050],"class_list":["post-1685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-progress","tag-abraham-polonksy","tag-gareth-evans","tag-joe-garfield","tag-mark-walhberg","tag-martial-arts","tag-peter-berg","tag-taylor-kitsch","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1685"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14876,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions\/14876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Prime](\"https:\/\/external-content.duckduckgo.com\/iu\/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimages-na.ssl-images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fpv-target-images%2F2e77a2482d45d5017677bb4e1d61b97ef69f8c3adbf3a6603a59db1063fce56f._RI_V_TTW_.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=7fd1236341994d8c1a6d84a1aee454cc9199ba2d4eb044d2f77535b7ac59b67b\")
<\/p>\n![\"Force](\"https:\/\/external-content.duckduckgo.com\/iu\/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fm.media-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FM%2FMV5BNzVkMTlhNTMtMzZkMC00NDI4LTkwYzItNzVlMjA3NTRmYmEzXkEyXkFqcGc%40._V1_.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=1a600690ee8db352db7f868ca4809ece753391d88671168e6210fe9f87672052\")
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