Lone Survivor

"Actor-turned-director Peter Berg (he was great in Wes Craven's Shocker!) has a knack for infusing jingo-istic military gung-ho storytelling with a relatively grounded sense of camaraderie and brotherhood. That ability is tested to its limit in this adaptation of former US Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell's memoir about a violent incident in Afghanistan in 2005. If you smarted at the patriotic fervour in Berg's last film, the underrated (seriously!) Battleship, you'll have similar mountains to climb here."

"A scorching, often unbearably brutal account."

"The direction pummels and the cast impress, yet Berg’s war movie promises more than it delivers."

"There's moral complexity and a climax in an Afghan village which is tense and surprisingly moving."

"A modest, competent, effective movie, concerned above all with doing the job of explaining how the job was done."

"Replete with a certain kind of self-importance and self-forgiveness... has a distinctively martyred America-at-bay feel."

"An intense look at 19 American deaths and one survival in a vividly re-created chapter of the fighting in Afghanistan."

"A severe portrait of fortitude under extreme pressure, somewhat marred by blinkered politics."