Of the films shows hoping to pronounce some kind of truth about conflict in the Middle East, few are embraced by critics, and fewer by the public. They don’t make money, and only a select couple were embraced by critics. There’s Jarhead, which barely made back its budget despite Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead. Next, look to The Kingdom, which fell to a similar fate with Jamie Foxx. Green Zone was Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass’s very expensive follow-up to the Bourne series, finding a Bourne-like military man investigating weapons of mass destruction. It flopped hard. Not even resounding critical acclaim could save The Hurt Locker from being the lowest grossing best picture winner ever. There’s one exception, but due to its historical relevance and masterfully executed nature, Zero Dark Thirty is more an exception that proves the rule rather than an indication of change. So, in a way, it doesn’t belong with the others. But what of the others? There’s a key through line uniting each of them together. They are political failures. They either have too much to say or too little, unable to find a healthy middle ground and subsequently alienating audiences.

Lone Survivor is the latest offender, and it’s one of the worst.

Peter Berg, who recently insulted audiences around the world with the exceedingly dim-witted board game adaptation Battleship, based his latest on the book Lone Survivor, of which the film took its name. The book and film chronicle a botched mission named “Operation Red Wings’ that took place during the War in Afghanistan (the book also documents the enlistment and training of its author, which the film has excised). Navy SEALs were sent to capture or kill an infamous Taliban leader but failed. Most of the squad ended up dead. The book dramatizes the mission with very little before or after, just enough time to introduce the four SEALs that lead the mission in-film. The cast is strong, one of the strongest points of the film, dutifully made up by Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, and what amounts to a cameo role by Eric Bana. Although little time is spent characterizing any of them, the cast is extremely likable and imparts that trait onto the characters. We come to know and care about these guys after only being with them for ten minutes, and their chemistry thrives as the film continues. The script’s efforts to humanize them for the audience, such as ongoing mini-arcs that involve wall tiles or an Arabian horse, would’ve felt like the artificial contrivances that they are rather than endearing points of characterization. The characters work.

It was an interesting decision to embrace the public knowledge element of the story, and instead of playing which audience members know the ending, it’s flaunted openly at them. Flaunted, since, well, it’s in the title, but it’s also in the marketing. An extended five minute trailer played amidst the pre-screening advertisements, before the rest of the previews even, to ensure as many people as possible would be aware the mission failed and most of the men ended up dead. If you think that’s a spoiler, blame Peter Berg, not me. This creates an interesting scenario, where tension and suspense must be cultivated alternative to ‘what happens in the end.’ To be honest, it’s largely effective. The action is tautly directed and portrayed with startling realism and avoids shaky cam cliché. We see everything, more than many would probably like, but it’s by looking death in the face that we feel the physicality of the firefight. The geography of Afghanistan is used to remarkable effect, and it’s among the first films depicting battles overseas to give a palpable sense of how they’re probably carried out in this terrain. Whether that’s actually true or not isn’t important, that it feels true lends these sequences an unparalleled authenticity for action in rural Afghanistan. After the monotony of urban warfare popularized in war cinema by Saving Private Ryan and later Black Hawk Down, the drastic change in scenery, and thus how battles are fought, is a very welcome one. Soldiers delicately maneuver within the winding rock formations and rich forests, and although they can’t come close to matching the intensity of The Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty, they’re convincing and intense. Lone Survivor is easy to invest in, or it would be, if the thematic undertones didn’t abrasively evolve into overtones and drown out everything else.