Operation Redwing In Peter Burg's Movie, Lone Survivor

The movie “Lone Survivor” is based on a true story of Operation Redwing in Afghanistan in 2005. This required a four man SEAL team including: Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Mathew Axelson (Ben Foster), and Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch). Marcus and his team are on the search to capture and/or kill Taliban leader Ahmad Shah. When the team’s cover is given away by a sheep herder, the team gets pinned down by gun fire in the mountains and out numbered by the Taliban. After losing all three of his team-mates and a rescue helicopter, filled with other SEALs and Marines, Marcus is left in the mountains wounded and alone. He crawled miles and miles across the rocky terrain until he ran across Mohammad Gulab, a local

This book, Lone Survivor, sparked “Peter Burg’s film chronicles the fate of SEAL Team 10 on a disastrous 2005 mission in Afghanistan” (SMITH). He used this book as the story line for his movie, so all he had to do was accurately portray it on the screen. This was no easy task when the script calls for his actors to jump off the “sheer cliff face” (Luttrell 219) of a mountain, and look as if bullets and RPGs are exploding all around them. But that is exactly what the film portrayed along with all the other small details like the setting. The movie was shot in New Mexico in a terrain much like where the SEAL team bunkered down is some of their final moments. Also the other key reason the movie is here today and plays a main role in the book and the movie is Mohammed Gulab. He was a part of one of the “feircely independent mountain tribes that tried to avoid Taliban and American entanglements” (Kirkus). He had found Marcus wounded in the forest being search for by the Taliban, and took him back to his village and protected him. He had his “ inscrutable, honor-bound, ancient Pashtun society and warrior code that guided Gulab” (Kirkus) to help Marcus. Though this was in the book, Director Burg took it in his hands to travel to Afghanistan to get Mohammed’s side of the story and his motives to create accurate scenes for the movie. Due

Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, and Emile Hirsch went through a boot camp to learn the “basics to get the muscle memory down” (DinusMarius). They did this so when the actors get to the movie instead of going by script, they can react and make it more realistic. This in return creates a more professional movie, and makes the men who they are playing look better to the viewer. With all the training and shooting came the mindset these men face to becoming a part of the elite special forces. The “unrelenting desire to push [themselves] harder and further than anyone could possibly think” (107:00-108:00), and when they grasped this mindset they fully understand what this movie standed for. All this training helped Pete Berg and his actors create a realistic movie to honor those who where lost in Operation