Got a little dusty at the end....

Yep, it sure did. A lot of dust.

No kidding, watched it on HBO because life was happening too much for me when it was in the theaters.



 

Just at the end? Not in my experience...

(I've seen it twice in theaters)

great movie, why the didn't smoke those goat people is beyond me.  Guess there is a reason I never served, no way I could follow rules of engagement in those situations.

One of the best movies out there.  My allergies seem to bother me each time I see it.

I read the book but think they did an incredible job on the movie. Yeah it was dusty in my house as well but what those guys went through was a no win situation. My son was born the same day the Chinook was taken out and the QRF killed, it's a great and sad day at the same time. Marcus has a lot of demons he carries and will carry all his life but I don't see how he could blame himself with any of it.

The movie was great as was the book

ETA: It's easy to think that until your looking at an old man who just wants to get his goats up the mountain.

It's a great movie.

They are men of honor. The herders had compromised their mission. No way killing unarmed civilians would have made their situation any better. The Lieutenant made the HARD right call.

Because the U.S. government would have sent them to prison for life just like the Army Lieutenant.  The powers that be have shown where their loyalties lie, and good men are lost daily because of it.

I read the book back maybe four years ago and there were a couple scenes in the movie I didn't remember from the book.

Such as the firefight in the village at the end.

I just watched it for the first time last week and I thought it was terrific.

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Agreed, that was a hard decision. Wonder if they could have tied them up and bought themselves a few hours to get comma going but 20/20 hindsight. As for the movie, I thought Walhberg did a great job as Marcus.

One question I've always wanted to ask:

Why not zip tie the dudes together sothat, although they could move, you would slow them WAY down and get the heck outta dodge?

I understand they didn't want to tie them to trees because of wolves, etc.

Only movie I purchased this year so far for the collection.  Good flick

Once they left, the locals would have started screaming and shouting. Still alerting the enemy. So, why not take them with you? Would you want to herd uncooperative civilians up a 12,000 foot mountain to get comms? Kidnapping locals dose not sit well with commanders, same as murdering them. They were looking at a no win situation, NO MATTER WHAT.

I like both the movie and the book.

I keep watching this over and over and love it every time

That's what I thought, too.  Zip tie the old guy to the kid. I would have taken a day to get down.  I guess hindsight is 20 - 20.

Did you read the book?

They voted as a group on whether to follow ROE, and it came down to one vote.

Goat herders lived, all but Marcus died.

I recall very early in the book him dissing the ROE, when he said if he met bin Laden, he would shoot him dead. Just because of who he is.

I also remember him making a remark about the ROE at that point.

I wonder if they carry some 'knock-out' drug now. One that would put them to sleep for a couple hours.

They showed a little bit of that in the movie. During the briefing they cut to Wahlbergs face during the recap of the ROE and he gave a disgusted look, very subtle but it was there.

I thought the movie was pretty meh.

I watched it for the first time tonight on HBO, I don't get to go town all that often.  It was a good movie. I have been meaning to read the book, I might have to order it tonight so I can have some reading material in the deer blind.

Yeah it was awesome how we apached the village and marky mark got the dirty peasant kid to hand him a knife and kill that angry bad guy just in the nick of time.


Fuck. Merica is so badass!

Edit: wolves...lol

Rather than getting the book,well read it too if you want I suppose but know that the Navy hired a British fiction writer to pen it, pick up Victory Point. It's a bit closer to telling what most likely actually happened

http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Point-Operations-Battlefor-Afghanistan/dp/042523259X

Because the goat herders were a symptom of the real problem. They were likely unarmed scouts on purpose.

I've read that the "fake drop" spots they used, were ones that they had been using before, and often. It's possible that insurgents had already known they were there, and were just trying to track them down.

Luttrell's disgust for ROE is pretty obvious in the book.

As soon as they were discovered by the goat-herders, they were compromised.  If they killed them, somebody was going to come looking for them.  they might have had a little extra time, but eventually the goat-herders were going to be missed.  It has been a while since I read the book, but I think the timeline in the movie was a bit expedited.  Even with the 6-8 hour head start they may have had, that terrain sucked and comms sucked.  it was going to be a tricky extract no matter what.  

Fought like dragons, though.

One of my all time favorite movies.  The book is worth a read.

Shoulda zip tied their asses to a tree. Somebody would have found them sooner or later.

This.

I know its been beat to death on arfcom (and my memory is still hazy), but isn't the whole interaction with the "herders" allegedly fiction?

Apparently rehearsed sop's werent an important thing until recently. At least not for seals.

That kind of stuff probably took a back seat to deciding which kind of hair gel to requisition.


(I kid).

I mean... who would've thought that inserting into an enemy territory for a recon mission would require thinking about what to do if you made contact with prevalent locals?

Nobody could have forseen that as a potential.

u


Dude but wolves would have totally ignored the untended goats amd gone after them.

Fuckin dbl tap

pretty much everything after wahlberg falls in the water is made up for the movie..

Just watched it a bit earlier and every time I watch the scenes where they jump off the side of the mountain I tense up. No doubt getting shot sucks but they really make those falls look excruciatingly painful.

God Bless those guys.

After following several threads on here that involved a lot of knowledgeable people some of which were in that area around that time my impression was that a whole lot of that story was fiction.

Don't know how accurate the movie was but looks like a lot of f ups. Spoke to an SF officer and he said there is a significant difference between Army SF and Navy SEALs. Seemed like he was saying SF are more thinkers and planners than their Navy counterparts.

I've heard this to be accurate. I've also heard that this is changing.

I do not know how accurate either of these things are.

Do you have some links to the threads? I'd be interested to do some reading on other perspectives.

movie may have been fiction in some parts....but those pictures at the end are real....real lives...real families....real kids.....that is the important part of the movie...

I've met Marcus and listened to him speak about that day.  He carries a lot of demons about him and that fight.  Hope he finds peace some day.

I watched this earlier today.  He speaks to the point about the discussion about whether or not to kill the goat herders.  That part alone is worth the watch.

the movie only got 2 stars? weird

I had to stop the movie a couple of times and take a break.  It was tough to watch knowing what was going to happen.  Brutal.

The only problem is that none of it went down that way at all.  The movie is based on the book, and the book was ghost written by a sensationalist British military author who sat down with Marcus in one, unrecorded session for the material.

For those of us who spent years in the reconnaissance community, who have heard the details of Marcus's own AAR/debrief post recovery (by Army elements of SOCOM), there is no mention of most of what is written in the book.  For starters, Ahmad Shah never was responsible for the deaths of 20 Marines.  There weren't even 20 Marines KIA in Afghanistan by July, 2005.  There were 9 USMC fatalities as of the commencement of Operation Red Wings in June of 2005, which The Lone Survivor doesn't even correctly name on the book cover.

If you doubt this, here is the list of US fatalities, not even just KIA, but fatalities from accidents as well:  Casualties OEF Afghanistan

Ahmad Shah wasn't even a High Value Target.  He was a Target of Interest that 3/3 Marines had planned to pinpoint with one of their recon teams from the STA Platoon.  Instead, the mission was given to the SEALs, and they planned and executed it horrendously.  They failed before they even got to Afghanistan.  Ahmad Shah had a group consisting of 7 other fighters, 8 total with him.  They were the only ones who ambushed the SEALs after they were compromised.

The compromise of the team was a textbook lesson in how to do the opposite of everything you learn as a Reconnaissance commando, as well as leadership failures all the way up to the CJSOTF.  They didn't have a no-commo plan, they only took 2 commo devices, an MBITR and the SAT Phone, which is an emergency layer that should come after 2 other layers of radios.  They didn't have a mission support site, no commo/terrain mitigation plan, no camouflage/hide site, rigged out for CQB rather than SR, took only 5.56 small arms including SPR's?, emplaced their OP on a ledge surrounded by high ground, with absolutely nowhere to E&E from, and most likely were asleep when the goat herders walked up on them, bells and all on the goats' necks.

It's fairly easy even then to get out of that one, once they were soft compromised.  Send your communicator and another man for security up the mountain to make comms and provide a SITREP, with an immediate request for exfil, while the 2 other men guard the goat herders.  If they had stayed off the stupid goat trails, complete with goat scat, they never would have been caught racked out in the first place.

Even from the perspective of a first-term Recon soldier in an Army Scout Platoon, there are so many things they did wrong before they even got there that are painfully clear to see.  For someone who has spent time in several recon units spanning 10 years, including the leadership and detailed mission planning pieces of the pie, this whole episode makes you ask why they didn't have the proper training to conduct a pretty basic operation.  Unfortunately, it comes as no surprise for those of us who have deployed as part of a CJSOTF, or worked with the SEALs in a professional capacity.

If you really want to get misty eyed, think of the highly sensitive equipment that was recovered by Ahmad Shah and his men:

* Ruggedized laptop with intact hard drive, to include detailed imagery of sensitive US locations in the region that had no business even being on the mission
* MBITR radio
* 3 SOPMOD configured M4A1 carbines with Own The Night accessories, 2 with M203 Grenade Launchers
* Night Vision Devices
* Spotting scope

How many lives were lost, and how much additional effort had to be sacrificed in the recovery?  For starters, the ad hoc QRF and the MH-47 crew were all killed within hours. The equally big picture consequences revolve around that hard drive and the weapons.

Liked it better the second time. The first time I went in expecting it to be more like the book version of the story and was disappointed.

When I watched it the second time I was prepared to watch a action movie that was neither true nor much like the book, as such I enjoyed it for what it was.

It's pretty easy to blame some generic term when the deaths of Americans was mostly caused by their own errors and the attributes of their favored organization at the time.

ROE didn't kill them.

Exactly what I thought watching the movie but i'm just a dumb Marine. That and why didnt you bring a couple claymores and a SAW?

Yep.

Also, the only 100% truthful parts of the movie are the beginning that shows SEAL training, and the end that shows the real KIA.  

It is however a good movie.