POPCORN PATRIOTISM
Nerve-shredding action and top-notch acting, but this tale of a U.S. catastrophe in Afghanistan overdoes the flag-waving
big box-office hit in America, and it’s easy to see why. Popcorn and patriotism was always a heady mix.
n AMERICANS might be less comfortable with Out Of The
Furnace, in which a veteran of the Iraq War finds, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy, that after all he’s done for his country, his country doesn’t care much for him.
This is Rodney Baze (Casey Affleck), whose disaffection with civilian life turns him into a bum, relying on gambling and bare-knuckle fights to pay his debts.
The responsible member of the family is his older brother Russell ( Christian Bale), a worker at the local steel mill, but his life veers off track, too, when he is involved in a fatal car crash and sent to prison for drink-driving.
All this unfolds in blue-collar Pennsylvania, an America of belching chimneys and belching deadbeats. It is the same backdrop as in the first part of The Deer Hunter, a connection impossible to avoid when Russell and his uncle (Sam Shepard) go into the woods stalking stags.
But the dangers here are all home-grown, notably a moral delinquent called Harlan DeGroat ( an over- the- top Woody Harrelson), with whom Rodney tangles with disastrous consequences. Rodney might be a hapless younger brother, but this is a long way from Only Fools And Horses, ending up as a rather one- dimensional vengeance thriller after promising more depth.
There is much to admire, not least Bale, and Willem Dafoe nicely cast as a sleazy bar owner. Yet Out Of The Furnace is a dis-appointment, winding up as something much less than the sum of its impressive parts.
WeRe it possible to watch
Lone Survivor in smell- ovision, the cinema would reek of blood and sweat, but most of all, testosterone.
This is first and foremost a gung-ho homage to the 19 U.S. servicemen who died in a botched attempt to kill a Taliban leader in 2005, and to the one who survived to record his near- death experience in a book, on which the film is based.
But it also plays like an extended recruitment advert, with a resounding message and familiar three-word subtext: God Bless America.
The message is this: become a U.S. Navy Seal, see the world, and if you and your buddies do happen to get killed up an Afghan mountain, be sure that by your heroic dying breath you will have enjoyed camaraderie of such precious intensity that it will all have been worthwhile. The film is wrapped in the Stars and Stripes no less than the repatriated coffins of its heroes.
But, setting aside the jingoism for a moment, it is thrillingly done. Mark Wahlberg plays Marcus Luttrell, one of a four-man elite squad whose mission it is to eliminate an important Taliban commander in the mountains of Afghanistan.
We know from the picture’s title that only one of them makes it out alive, but that’s not the spoiler it might be, because the action sequences are properly exciting.
The writer- director, Peter Berg, also made Battleship, more than two hours of whizz-bang nonsense inspired by the board game that left me wishing he’d chosen a different board game, such as Ludo. Subtlety is not his thing, but this is a much classier affair.
We begin at a remote U.S. base, where the Seals are revealed to be not just impressively tough but admirably tender, too, devotedly messaging their wives and girlfriends back home. Then they get their orders, to kill a Taliban leader called Ahmad Shah (hook-nosed and beetle-browed, naturally).
He is holed up in a high-altitude camp and the only way of getting at him is from the surrounding mountain- tops. It is a tough challenge but well within their mighty capabilities. All is proceeding to plan when they encounter an old goat-herd and some younger companions.
These men are captured, and appear to be Taliban sympathisers. There ensues what passes for a philosophical debate. Should the Seals kill their captives in cold blood? They don’t, and then, when the most fleet-flooted of the men alerts the enemy to their presence, the debate passes to us: should they have done so?
That apart, this is a film that
THe Seals who die do so nobly, in slow-motion. The Afghans, by contrast, even the sympathetic villagers who risk their lives giving shelter to the lone survivor, expire without ceremony.
This distinction rather smacks of Fifties B-westerns, although, regrettably, the idea that one cowboy is worth ten Indians is not exclusive to film directors. The world’s political and military leaders nurture it, too.
Still, at least shoot- outs have come on since the Fifties, even if morality hasn’t. The Taliban ambush and ensuing firefight on the mountain are brilliantly handled, and we feel the predicament of the Seals, whose only escape route is a vertiginous drop. Theirs is the ultimate choice between a rock and a hard place.
As Luttrell, Wahlberg is terrific, and gets excellent support from Taylor Kitsch, emile Hirsch and Ben Foster as his comrades-inarms, and from eric Bana as commanding officer erik Kristensen, who leads a doomed rescue attempt.
But an extended sequence at the end of photographs and home-movie footage reminds us, poignantly if a little too forcefully, who are the real stars of the show. The film is already a