Hanging Tough, Staying Hungry

In a foreign land, which speaks a foreign language, it’s more than a little disconcerting to be left alone in such a place. The tool that connects you to “civilization”; a culture you can understand, is broken and the chances of being taken care of generously is diminished by the fact that you’re in a war. Whoever said emotions don’t play a role in decisions had psychopathic traits and was missing something important. In addition, when confronted with dilemmas, we fall back on the most basic of understandings: those tied to our emotions. One of those understandings is ‘do onto others what you want done onto you.’ I believe that prerogative is the basis of the conflict in the movie: “Lone Survivor”. Had he logically thought about letting those people go, he would have taken into account the circumstances and their facial expressions that clearly signaled at another decision. Hidden, it was, underneath the moral conflict between the two subordinates.

The difference between these SEALs and the group in Saving Private Ryan, is that the SEALs were more cheerful. They had a well-established base of operations and lots of firepower. It made them more confident than a bunch of exhausted WWII soldiers doing their best to end the war as quickly as possible. The SEALs’ commanding officer was more closely related to his subordinates (probably because they all had big muscles in common.) Anyway, there was even a big difference in the contrast of the motion picture. The scenes in SPR were bleak and burdensome while the scenes in LS were colorful, bright and picturesque. It made the movie much lighter as compared to SPR.