Thrown into the middle of a combat warfare, we are given a
visceral experience in the perspective of Navy Seals ambushed by a greater
force of Taliban fighters. Directed by Battleships’ Peter Berg the film
presents the ill fated navy seal Operation Red Wings which an account was
written by sole survivor of the operation, Marcus Luttrell. Mark Whalberg fills
Luttrell’s shoes effortlessly as one of a four man Seal team caught in the
middle of a Taliban onslaught, other members played by the underrated talents
of Ben Foster, Emile Hirsh and Taylor Kitsch. The action is tense, brutal and
completely unrelenting. Berg smartly doesn’t let up on the ambush giving the
characters very little time to catch their breath before another blast of
debris interrupts. After the first shot is fired the attack is endless with
every man fighting on despite numerous bullet hits, filmed in their shoes with
the audience feeling every blast, every bullet to the body and feeling every bump
on a fall.
It is a film dominated by one set piece the onslaught they
face as they try to descend the mountain; it is an incredible gun battle where
insurgents pop out of nowhere and provides a lot of tension and shot with an
intense but realistic amount of blood, gore and the loud cracks of gunfire.
While the third act relents it still provides an intriguing coda as Whalberg is
sheltered from the Taliban by a village warlord conveying the far more complex
divisions of Afghan society and adding grey to the seemingly simple black and white
portrayal of the conflict. Though like the Hurt Locker this is a war film about
the soldier over the politics rightly doesn’t try to begin a polarising debate
but simply depend our understanding of the sacrifice these Seals make on a
daily basis; every day could end the way this one did. The opening and closing
credits are of the real Seals making the film feel a little too much like a
reconstruction than a standalone story. Whalberg and the much of the supporting
cast do excellent jobs in presenting the fear and the base instincts of humans
no matter how tough.
Tuhin Chowdhury
