Featurettes spotlight tough conditions of 'Lone Survivor'

Posted Thursday, January 9, 2014 at 4:48 PM Central

by John Couture

When the title of your film is basically the world's worst spoiler alert, you have to make sure that your film is so compelling that people want to see it despite knowing how it ends. Thankfully, the true-life events surrounding Lone Survivor are such that you won't have a choice but to be pulled to this story.

I'm currently listening to Marcus Luttrell's audio book of the events surrounding Operation Red Wings and it is perhaps the most compelling and shocking book that I've ever read/listened to. Multiple chapters devoted to the rigorous SEAL training regiment do more to conveying what it means to be a SEAL than Demi Moore ever could in G.I. Jane. I was tired and hurting just listening to the Hell Week chapter. But it's this intensity and devotion to detail that makes you realize just how much we lost on that fateful mission.

Much like knowing that the ship sinks didn't hurt Titanic's earning potential, I think the foreknowledge of events only adds to the foreboding in the story. This is precisely the type of film that I want in Peter Berg's hands, much like I want Michael Bay directing any action film whatsoever.

The only thing that's weird to me is Berg's insistence on casting Taylor Kitsch in all of his projects. Hopefully, this one goes better than their last collaboration. But the real star has to be Mark Wahlberg who will be playing Marcus in the film. Anyhow, I don't usually push out all of the clips and features that come across my desk, but these three are pretty neat and I thought I'd share.

Lone Survivor is playing now and is expanding everywhere this Friday.