Lone Survivor is based on a true story about a team of four Navy Seals that became surrounded by over a hundred Afghan Soldiers. The movie depicts that there is a no win-win situation when it comes to war. The movie starts off at the training camps with the Seals. We get to watch the bond between the soldiers and have a few good laughs before the movie takes a turn for the serious scenes. The movie begins to take a turn for the worse once four Seals begin their mission in a forest. The Seals ran into Afghan civilians and made the decision to let them walk away, this was a huge mistake which led to over twenty Navy Seals being killed. The leader of the Seals, Marcus Luttrell, made this decision because the civilians were unarmed so it would have been a war crime to kill them, even if it meant jeopardizing their safety. The rest of the movie unfolds the true horror that follows over the next couple of hours.

What made this movie different from any other war movie I have ever watched was that I could tell the bond between the actors was real on and off screen. That made the movie that much more enjoyable and emotional. It was a tough movie to watch, but it was also a good reminder of how thankful we need to be for the men and women who suffer for our freedom.

This movie keeps you on your toes the entire time. There is never a dull moment where you lose interest and turn your attention elsewhere. This movie is filled with so many moments of hope and shock. There are moments where you think the Navy Seals are about to be rescued, but then something else goes horribly wrong and adds to the tragedy of the story. For example a helicopter with sixteen Seals were in eyesight of the Seals that were in danger and for a split second you think everything is going to be ok, but then a twelve year old shoots it out of the sky and hope is gone yet again. Then you find yourself wondering who will be the one to survive, who will be the “Lone Survivor.” There were other moments where I was just left in complete shock. For example one of the Navy Seals would be shot and then carry on fighting without even giving it a second thought or reacting to the pain which had just been inflicted. There was another moment where one of the Navy Seals started tumbling down a hill and hit his head hard multiple times and was still able to get up and shake it off.

One moment in the movie that really stuck out to me was when local Afghan residents opened their town and offered their help to Marcus, the Lone Survivor, who was very close to death. The village continued to help Marcus even when the Taliban continuously kept coming back and attacking the village. Ever since their assistance to help save Marcus, the Afghan village has been a Taliban target. This scene stuck out to me, because it would have been easy for the village to just surrender an American stranger to the Taliban to save themselves, but instead they continued to defend and fight for Marcus.

I think the movie did a great job of depicting all of the gruesome and horrible events the Navy Seals had to go through, but after doing some research on the events that happened that day I discovered that there were some events that should not have been left out of the movie. When I watched a interview of the real Lone Survivor, Marcus Lutrell, I discovered that his rescue by the local Afghan residents was not as easy and glamorous in real life. In reality Marcus had to drag himself on his stomach on gravel for seven miles before running into his rescuers. In the movie Marcus is just stumbled upon while running away from the Afghan soldiers, which was not true, because he was paralyzed. Another gory detail they left out of the movie was Marcus actually bit his tongue in half while crawling to safety.

I would not recommend this movie to family members of soldiers who have fought, are fighting, or who have died. I think the movie would paint an awful picture of what their loved ones go through. The gory scenes were sad to watch but it was a wake up call for many on how violent war is and the dangers we are sending our troops into. This movie made me appreciate my freedom more as well as the people who fight for it, and I believe that was the message the director wanted to send.