Lone Survivor Movie Review

I think when Marcus Luttrell complains that he doesn’t understand how people could possibly say Lone Survivor, the movie based on his memoir, glorifies war because “there is nothing glorious about war,” he is missing the point. Due respect to Luttrell – he’s been to Afghanistan, watched his friends die, and was incredibly lucky to come out alive, but saying that a Hollywood movie glorifies something is not the same as saying that that something is glorious. No doubt being in war is terrible beyond words. That’s why veterans tend not to talk about the experience of war outside the context of the buddies they made and the stories they told and created. But a movie can make that experience seem, to the uninitiated, sexy, desirable, exciting, fulfilling, and yes, glorious. There’s an extent to which all films that depict war are inherently pro-war. You can’t show an image of something without tacitly endorsing what it represents. Whether or not Lone Survivor goes out of its way to glorify war or whether it is a form of war porn I’m not sure. Does the level of realism make it more or less responsible?

3:10 to Yuma Movie Review

In the pantheon of classic Westerns, the 1957 3:10 to Yuma, directed by Delmer Daves, sits on the shelf of forgotten films. There’s simply no room in the history books for entertainments that rank slightly better than mediocre. Unfortunately it also suffered a close resemblance to High Noon, which went on to fill the quota for films about a lone idealist standing up for justice when no one else will.

For better or worse, the 2007 James Mangold remake is also likely to suffer a similar fate 50 years from now. There’s little in this update which will make it into a classic, but that hardly means it isn’t worth seeking out today.