Most are smart at just doing this these days. I’m just curious if they say otherwise here.
Movie Lone Survivor (2013)
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he lived it. He said it’s true. He wrote a book which preceded the movie AND he’s given TONS of interviews where he talks about the movie and ALL that happened to him.
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Is Lone Survivor a True Story?
‘Lone Survivor’ is a 2013 war drama film written and directed by Peter Berg. It stars Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, and Eric Bana in the lead roles. The film tells the story of a group of United States Navy SEALs who undertake a daring mission to capture an operative of...
thecinemaholic.com
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Oh, Lone Survivor was supposedly based on true events, but created a generic large Taliban bad guy force. It only had to be big enough to overwhelm a 4-man team (and a RPG to shoot down a chopper). But the movie depicts a small army of baddies at all times. The movie continually kisses the ass of SEALS and glamorizes their actions, much in the same way Top Gun did with naval aviators, except using a backdrop of a real failed mission.
BHD humanizes the troops involved- some were gung-ho idiots, some were professionals betrayed by bad intelligence, many others were just rank-and-file clerks and drivers who became heroes that day by riding to the rescue. It's action-heavy but still highly watchable today. Lone Survivor isn't even as good as American Sniper.
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I enjoyed both movies.
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Yeah I remember he was caught in some of his lies. The story never made much sense. He was overly dramatic at times he shouldn't have been. He claimed a shitload of people were shooting at him when only a few were ever accounted for.
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Is Lone Survivor a True Story?
‘Lone Survivor’ is a 2013 war drama film written and directed by Peter Berg. It stars Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, and Eric Bana in the lead roles. The film tells the story of a group of United States Navy SEALs who undertake a daring mission to capture an operative of...
that article says it’s nonfiction. That means it’s holding itself out as true and accurate.
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Cool.
I’m halfway through the movie….but @White Knight makes a good point with the linked article shared. It’s probably not fair to take what is shown in the movie and put it 100% on Lutrell.
I think a fair way to do this would be to follow what he states in his text. From what I can see up front it does sound like many war stories end up sounding….like a “the fish I caught was this big” story.
I’m going to finish the movie and do a little more diving….but I’ll just say it up front at this point….
I am engrained with a huge respect and appreciation for the troops. I was raised this way. I know that many stories that come out from the battle lines of history have embellishment to some degree. And….I’m fine with that. If a soldier puts on that uniform and goes and crawls into the shit, (especially for what will quickly become a pointless waste of 20 years) and that soldier wants to come out of it with a fish story that sells I will always say good for him/her.
That is usually what happens. The soldier pens a story and from that first draft to the release he/she has to try to resist all the pressures to make the story even more compelling. I’m not going to knock a good troop for that.
Weird that I never got a notification that I was tagged, but yet I found myself clicking this thread.
I watched this movie once on TV or streaming and remember it as a great entertaining story, regardless if it was fact or fiction. Like many movies in this category, you're never going to get only fact, but a LOT of embellishment to make it an entertaining movie that is less than 2 hours of run time. Same with American Sniper and others that were based on snippets of true stories.
Think of these types of movies as impressionist paintings. They're there to make you feel "something" that is loosely based on a real thing. It is not a photograph/documentary.
Ok….watched the movie and did some digging of my own. I found the uncensored taliban video. Not going to post it here. But if you go to the video you linked, first groups of comments, it will show you.you really should watch the movie before doing a deep dive.
Let me start a discussion about what I’ve found with what I believe to be the most convincing and damning piece of evidence that the story is NOT true.
A big part of the movie involves a gun battle these 4 seals had with the Taliban. It takes up a significant portion of the movie and has some of the most memorable scenes. ( @Wild Turkey has already alluded to them).
According to Luttrell, these 4 navy seals fought off anywhere between 100-200 Taliban (depending on which version of the story he is telling). He said the gun battle lasted 2-3 hours. A video surfaced a few years ago in which the Taliban actually videotaped the whole thing. There was a graphic version but it has since been scrubbed from the internet. There is a non- graphic version which depicts a gun battle lasting less than 30 minutes.
Here it is…
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there’s more I can say about this but let’s start there. If Luttrell lied (greatly exaggerated this gun battle) then it calls into question the rest of his story.
Also listened some to points made about confirming there was only 7 Taliban. I won’t argue it. I would like to think double that seems more right, but seven could be it. It’s like you mentioned in the JFK thread….familiarity with the battleground is advantageous. The Taliban had that. And it would seem they had a good match on firepower. The fact he made it out of there is amazing and inspiring on its own.
The movie didn’t shy away from one thing I remember from this that chaps my ass….I’ll share in another post.
I get what you mean about details being very questionable, though I’m not sure what you meant by “the rest of his story” that is questionable.
At the end of it…I think there is embellishment. Few might want to agree with this….but embellishment is a possible side effect of PTSD. I’m not offering him a full pass, I think it’s disingenuous to all their memories to overdo it. But, I just can’t raise my level of angst on this. He went through hell. It was a major FUBAR operation. I just can’t get too worked up about this.
The movie was not bad. It was just what a Hollywood retelling was going to do with such a tragic war event. It was going to almost deify those impacted. I am OK with this. If it were a doc that stayed more to the facts it would still leave this pit in my stomach.
They sure did do the American military centric type of flick. I will give them props that they didn’t glaze over exactly why the Afghans protected him. They were the hero’s that day.
Which got me pissed that we even fucked around there 20 years, got people’s hopes up and then never came through. That’s just bullshit.
Then I remembered part of the movie that got me pissed. When they finally got the QRF moving the Chinooks were held up because they had no Apache cover available. What they had was tied up with Army. Oh yeah, I remember part of this event that really got me pissed.
If was 2005. We were years into a mission we took on. Why did we not have adequate support equipment for the missions we were taking on? Because we were running Ops in two theaters.
Im not really saying the Apaches would have kept both Chinooks up. Just that I remember, maybe, someone in the Pentagon saying they are being stretched way too thin in Afghanistan. It aggravates me all over again that we didn’t have the ability to fully cover these troops because of the boondoggle we leapt into a few thousand miles west of Afghanistan.
They sure did do the American military centric type of flick. I will give them props that they didn’t glaze over exactly why the Afghans protected him. They were the hero’s that day.
Which got me pissed that we even fucked around there 20 years, got people’s hopes up and then never came through. That’s just bullshit.
Then I remembered part of the movie that got me pissed. When they finally got the QRF moving the Chinooks were held up because they had no Apache cover available. What they had was tied up with Army. Oh yeah, I remember part of this event that really got me pissed.
If was 2005. We were years into a mission we took on. Why did we not have adequate support equipment for the missions we were taking on? Because we were running Ops in two theaters.
Im not really saying the Apaches would have kept both Chinooks up. Just that I remember, maybe, someone in the Pentagon saying they are being stretched way too thin in Afghanistan. It aggravates me all over again that we didn’t have the ability to fully cover these troops because of the boondoggle we leapt into a few thousand miles west of Afghanistan.
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This is why I hate the movie The Perfect Storm. Everyone died, how the hell are you going to tell an elaborate story, claiming it’s based on facts. It should say something like, “loosely based” or “we got the idea from___and exaggerated a bunch of shit to make a movie”.
I also read that Luttrell was full of shit about a lot of things in his book (“misremembered”) and it was further exaggerated in the movie.
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What do you mean he seemed "off"? What was "highly exaggerated or outright bullshit" and how do you know?
I have not heard anything like that, hence my curiosity. And yes, according to what I saw in the movie, that family is as much a hero as anyone. According to the movie... there is no movie without their actions to hide, defend, and trust him.
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It’s a bullshit story.
I believe the man who saved Luttrell, Mohamed Gulab, more than Marcus Luttrell.
One is a multimillionaire, the other had his life destroyed and lives in a tiny apartment outside Dallas.
But both are going to out live that war. So good for both of them.
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as always, I appreciate your thoughtful insight. I too think this guy had ptsd BAD. Watch him on the Rogan podcast. You can see him actually relieving stuff (real or not) and the ptsd kicking in.
Check out this Newsweek article. It gives lots of details about Luttrell and Gulob. For me, it gives a nice accounting of the “other side of the coin”
Navy SEAL's Savior Claims 'Lone Survivor' Got It Wrong
Marcus Luttrell and the Afghan villager who saved him had a falling out over money, respect and what really happened during Operation Red Wings.
www.google.com
I could not find the unedited version. I’d be very interested to see it. I read somewhere that they were yelling for Marcus. Can you please PM me the link?
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he seemed “off” bc of the PTSD. His stories change even within interviews. He is constantly changing the number of enemy combatants.
The video clearly shows there weren’t anywhere near 100 enemy combatants. Him saying so is not accurate. There is no way that fire fight lasted 2-3 hours like he claims it did. That’s bullshit. Again, the video shows it didn’t last that long. Also he claims the seals killed at least 50 Taliban. Again, I didn’t see any killed. The lack of bodies where confirmed by the marines that went into this area after the fight. They didn’t find ANY bodies. Also, if the fight lasted less than 30 minutes that means they are killing almost Taliban every minute. That’s bullshit. The Afghan when he helped him said he had lots of full ammo clips. Marcus said he shot all his ammo (or almost all). I believe the Afghan guy.