Lone Survivor

Actors:  Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster and Eric Bana.

Rating:  9 out of 10, An elegant film about the sacrifice young Americans continue to make daily in the furtive, hidden parts of the world.  You know going into the movie what the result is so it’s kind of painful to watch the real life story of a SEAL team's desperate battle for survival in Afghanistan which earned one a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor.   The 4-man recon team is compromised and tries to fight their way out of danger against a much larger force of Taliban. What emerges is the nobility of spirit amongst these warriors as they pay the price for a humane decision.  The devotion of the men to each other even when they might disagree is an object lesson.  The real life survivor plays a small role and advised in making the film, keeping the movie from descending into typical Hollywood jingoism.  The Afghans are given their place in the story and allowed to show some of their own nobility.  It’s bloody, heart rending and yet somehow ultimately uplifting.  The sacrifices these gallant young men made on that remote mountainside will never be forgotten now, even if the mainstream media would like to ignore the fact we still have a shooting war going on.  I was literally choked up at the end and said a prayer of thanks for those guys and to a country that can produce such heroes.

MVP:  Ben Foster as Ax truly captured the mannerism of a special forces operator