Lone Survivor – 5

It was interesting to compare this to Turn!, the AMC serial about the Revolutionary War, in which the occupying British forces are automatically the bad guys, to be slaughtered without compunction. Here, the occupiers were Americans – hence, the good guys – although it was not otherwise explained why they were in Afghanistan and we were to cheer for the local inhabitants who were killed by the dozens. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Stylistically, this was a total throwback to World War II or cowboy-Indian movies, where our heroes miraculously evade round after round while picking off the enemy with almost every shot of their own. Instead of a movie of some subtlety or plot leading up to a big shoot-out, this one jumped right to the shoot-out and achieved its length only by having each of Mark Wahlberg’s platoon mates gradually picked off, one by one, leaving alive, somewhat incredibly, only the title character. [No smoking!]