Bad language, bad glory, bad memory, bad movie

Based on Marcus Luttrell’s eponymous memoir, this recreation of 2005’s failed Operation Red Wings, in which Navy SEALs got stuck on an Afghan mountain while attempting to capture or kill Taliban leader Ahmad Shah, is itself a failed attempt to honour those men who died or nearly died on said mountain. The closing montage displaying photos of Red Wings’ (exclusively American) casualties is immensely moving. The problem is the preceding two hours, which begin like a recruitment video, build up to the war movie equivalent of torture porn, and end with an oversimplified resolution that’s willfully oblivious to any larger context.

During the opening teaser, Lutrell (Mark Wahlberg) explains in voice-over that “there is a storm inside” SEALs, “a burning, a river, a drive, an unrelenting desire,” and a lot of other stuff. Once the shit hits the fan, most of what’s spoken in Lone Survivor varies between “Goddamn motherfuckers,” “Fuck you,” “Ow, fuck,” “Fuckin’ fuck,” “Fucker,” “Fuck,” and “Fuuuuuck!” Carnage, chaos and imminent death will stifle the poet in any of us, but such expletive-laden dialogue seems designed foremost as a way of bluntly heightening the rat-a-tat and crunch of bones, which seem to be the key point of interest for director Peter Berg and his collaborators, who strain verisimilitude not only by reportedly grossly exaggerating the number of Taliban involved in the film’s central firefight, but also by hurling our already shot-up heroes down the mountain at high speed, smashing their torsos and skulls into pointy rocks, and having them continue to walk, talk and fight afterward.

Reverence for the dead shouldn’t make this film bulletproof—it should make us that much more concerned with truth and consequence. This is a serious movie, ostensibly dealing with serious questions about war, strategy, policy, and ethics. When discussing whether to eliminate or set free a trio of civilians who accidentally blow their cover, among the four SEALs (Wahlberg, Emile Hirsch, Taylor Kitsch and Ben Foster) only Lutrell speaks passionately about the imperative to be humane. Which leaves us with an uneasy feeling since—hardly a spoiler—he’s the only one who lives to tell the tale. And in the moral causality of Lone Survivor he’s rewarded for his humanity, by having his life fearlessly defended by an entire Afghan village—though in the closing voice-over he thanks only his brothers. The issue isn’t about what Lutrell feels or says in moments of trauma or mourning; it’s what’s said by this movie, which has the advantage of time and distance, and the burden of memory. 

                      

Catching up with a singular, hard-working prince

David Gordon Green has had one of the more prolific and peculiar careers in 21^st century movies. Born in Arkansas and raised in Texas, he made George Washington (2000), his feature debut, after graduating from the North Carolina School for the Arts. Green was still in his mid-20s, yet his craftsmanship, film literacy, attention to landscape and behaviour, and ability to draw captivating naturalistic performances from a cast comprised largely of non-actors indigenous to his rural location seemed preternaturally mature while running on pure instinct. Somewhat entranced with its own awkwardness, an unkind viewer could call it precious, but George Washington is a film I find impossible to be unkind to; it’s gorgeous, warm, curious, race-blind and age-blind, inherently timeless and flowing with tenderness. It remains Green’s strongest work, though many of its successors make such an appraisal easy.

Your Highness

All the Real Girls (2003), Undertow (2004) and Snow Angels (2007) retained the authentic regional flavour, sensitivity to character and obvious affection for the maverick directors of the 1970s (Altman, Ashby, Malick, et cetera), but they also used genre and semi-famous actors in ways that felt self-consciously quirky. By the end of Green’s string of box office-oriented, high-concept comedies Pineapple Express (2008), Your Highness (2011) and The Sitter (2011), it was easy to forget that he might be one of his generation’s most distinctive filmmakers. (Though it would be misleading to limit an assessment of Green’s career to his feature directorial credits; he’s also the producer of a numerous independent films and produced and directed episodes of Eastbound and Down.) When praising Green amongst discerning film buffs I’ve often received glances of incomprehension, but I can’t shake the integrity or promise of his early work. I don’t believe for a moment that anyone trying to forge a steady and diverse career in the industry is necessarily going to remain in full control of everything they work on, nor do I believe that Green has ever knowingly sold out. I’ve interviewed him twice, and, for what it’s worth, I don’t detect a cynical cell in his grey matter.

Prince Avalanche

Which brings us to the present and two reasons to feel vindicated for keeping faith in Green’s cinematic vision. With some luck, Joe (2013), Green’s absorbing adaptation of the eponymous Larry Brown novel, which stars an excellent Nicolas Cage, will find its way to local screens soon. Prince Avalanche (2013) meanwhile has already had its brief, limited theatrical run and is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. Loosely based on the Icelandic film Either Way (2011), Avalanche—the title an endearingly goofy amalgamation of its twin protagonists names, Alvin and Lance—stars Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as two guys—one older and engaged, the other younger and preoccupied with getting laid—who spend the summer painting lines on a remote stretch of highway, camping along the way and forging an unlikely but perfectly plausible bond.

Prince Avalanche, again, obviously

The film was prompted by the Texan band Explosions in the Sky, who proposed collaborating with Green on a project to be made in Barstop State Park, which was recovering from a massive fire. Avalanche was then hastily developed and put into production, and the urgency seems to have brought out Green’s inventiveness and his capacity for crafting story and character from the simplest ingredients. (The film also exhibits Green’s enduring affection for pre-digital culture, since I can’t figure out any other reason for setting the story in 1988.) The focus is squarely on the rhythms of work and downtime, on the funny way time has of transforming misunderstanding into its opposite, or the way men can be oblivious to their own bullshit. Alvin is uptight and pompous and poor Lance is, well, a few quarts short, but it’s adorable, not to say frequently hilarious, to observe their struggles to communicate, to express vulnerability and imagine their respective futures. As for Green, Joe and Avalanche give us plenty of reason to believe that his future holds many more works of idiosyncratic beauty. 

                    

Death in the family

It’s all about family in the end, so let’s talk about the family first. Chris (Emile Hirsch) is a young man with big, bad ideas and even bigger, badder debts to some very dangerous men. He’s cursed with a father so dumb that by comparison he assumes he must be a genius. That father, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), seems perpetually cowed by life. Ansel likes long underwear and monster truck rallies and shitty beer. He has a beautiful little moment when he enters the greasy spoon where Sharla (Gina Gershon), his wife, works: while scanning the room he spots a beer bottle abandoned by a previous customer with a finger of suds remaining in the bottom, and he swigs it. Sharla is a piece of work, a slattern schemer on the smallest of scales but armed with a road-tested, outsized sex appeal. She enters the film bush-first—a first for non-pornographic American cinema?—and when the rest of her gradually makes it into the frame she’s all erect nipples, big hair in curlers and mascara seemingly applied by Tammy Faye Baker’s personal make-up artist. Much later she will be charged with a task involving a drumstick that really needs to be seen to be understood.

Then there’s Dottie (Juno Temple), still a nymphette at 20, a kewpie doll busting at the seams, with a savant-like air yet far more observant than she gets credit for. She is an object of unnerving fantasies for Chris and of strange desire for the final member of our makeshift clan. Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a detective and contract killer from Dallas. He comes to this Texas backwater to assassinate Chris and Dottie’s coke-dealing mother, Ansel’s first wife, a character never seen but much reviled. When it turns out that Chris can’t come up with payment for the matricidal hit, Joe takes Dottie as collateral. He’s not so much pure-lusty as entranced; he recognizes something in her. Like Humbert Humbert, Joe seems drawn to Dottie as a way to recapture the innocent bliss of pubescent sexual awakening. Ansel doesn’t mind any of this, as though pimping and parenting are second cousins. “Might just do her some good,” he muses.

The net ingredients for Killer Joe, the second of Pullitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts’ stage works to be adapted for the screen by William Friedkin (the first was Bug, a marvelous manic showcase for Michael Shannon), are about as lurid and tabloid-like as any going. The characters range from eerie to appalling to manifestations of some hot’n’sizzly kind of primal evil. And you can never take your eyes off of them and, provided you have the stomach for this grade of soot-black humour, they are funny as all hell. The sharply constructed story, which could be seen as a tract on the perils of inbreeding, feels like Sam Shepard channeling Jim Thompson, the direction is bracing and nasty, but also weirdly clean and to-the-point, the performances are across the board fully committed, emboldened by outrageousness, figures from Greek tragedy mired in the murk of the Southern gothic grotesque. Again, depending on your tastes, Killer Joe is either a must-see or must-avoid. Either way you’ll probably want to shower after. And steer clear of deep-fried chicken for a while.