Lone Survivor carries out its mission reviews say

The Times' Betsy Sharkey writes Berg has finally found the right war to fight and the right cast to fight it. Whether it will be your kind of war depends. With its gruesome energy and remarkable reality Sharkey says this movie is not for the faint of heart.

The production and costume designers nail the details she writes and the actors led by Mark Wahlberg Ben Foster Emile Hirsch and Taylor Kitsch hit their marks As visceral as all four make the pain it is the raw emotions that are so riveting. Pain in their eyes tension rippling across faces acceptance of the inevitable but never retreat.

Also Photos On the set movies and TV Review Peter Berg's fierce 'Lone Survivor' captures realities of war 'Lone Survivor' likely to top 'Frozen' at weekend box office Pete Berg embedded with Navy SEALs before making 'Lone Survivor' 'Lone Survivor' Pressure pride and a Navy SEAL Envelope Screening Series Watch 'Lone Survivor' cast crew discuss film

WATCH Cast crew discuss the making of 'Lone Survivor'

The New York Times' A.O. Scott says 'Lone Survivor' is not messing around. Berg an unusually thoughtful action director has delivered a combat movie with the spare clean contours of an old Western as attuned to ethical questions as it is to gunplay and hot pursuit. The defining trait of the film Scott adds is professionalism. It is a modest competent effective movie concerned above all with doing the job of explaining how the job was done. Afterward you may want to think more about reasons and consequences about global and domestic politics but while the fight is going on you are absorbed in the mechanics of survival.

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune says that roughly half of Lone Survivor is standard issue Hollywood But the other half the hour or so of writer director Peter Berg's film dealing specifically with what happens when four men are cut off in Taliban country scrambling under fire is strong gripping stuff free of polemics nerve wracking in the extreme.

At its best Phillips adds the film accomplishes its mission which is to respect these men dramatize what they went through and let the more troubling matters of moral consequence trickle in where and how they may.

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The Boston Globe's Ty Burr however doesn't let the film off the hook as easily. He argues that the wars we fight aren't simple anymore and the best recent movies about them from 'Three Kings' to 'The Hurt Locker' to a dozen great documentaries like 'Restrepo' and 'Gunner Palace' aren't simple either. They have to address contexts of why we're there whether we're wanted how culture clashes macro and micro military and civilian play themselves out. To not do so as Peter Berg's rousing well made field tragedy does not is to end up with an old fashioned war movie.

Burr concludes Berg gives us courage under fire and a moving bullet chipped plaque of a drama. It's very good as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough anymore.

Nor is Burr alone in that sentiment. Michael O'Sullivan of the Washington Post writes What's missing here is something or rather someone to care about. The film presumes our emotional investment in Luttrell and his fellow soldiers' mission simply by virtue of well it's never quite clear what.

He adds We need something Compassion Commiseration Connection to leaven the monotony of the mayhem.

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