Lone Survivor (2013)
We’ve seen this before: young, fun-loving soldiers clash with their superiors before they’re assigned a dangerous mission. The mission will go well 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).
Mark Walhberg rose to fame as the younger brother of Donnie from NKOTB, had a number one hit with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, a successful career as a Calvin Klein underwear model, and now works as an action move star / semi-respectable actor. Amazingly, we live in a world where Marky Mark can get an Oscar nomination, but Richard Gere, Jeff Daniels, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Donald Sutherland, and Edward G. Robinson cannot.
From Tim Riggins to Battleship (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. Savages (2012) was a mess and didn’t help to assuage these concerns.
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.
Friday Night Lights proved 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. Battleship (2012) and Lone Survivor (2013) are dazzling films, but I can’t remember a single character because I didn’t care about any of them.
Occasionally, a film like Grand Illusion (1939), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), or Saving Private Ryan (1998) will transcend the war genre, but this boring, genre film did not.
The Raid: Redemption (2011)
A lot of people like this move, but I’m not one of them.
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.
There are better movies, with better fight scenes.
Force of Evil (1948)
Joe Morse (John Garfield) is a lawyer on the take for Tucker, a powerful gangster who wants to eliminate his competition in the numbers game including Joe’s brother, Leo.
This old-fashioned potboiler is heavy on archetypes featuring family rivalry, betrayal, and competing loyalties.
Director Abraham Polonsky refused to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee and 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, Polonksy publicly wished someone would shoot him onstage.
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.
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 (1972) and Goodfellas (1990).