9 Uber-Jingoistic Movies That Are Still Legitimately Great

2) Lone Survivor

So gung-ho it features a crack team of Navy SEALS getting headshot, gut-shot, then thrown off of cliffs and surviving, Lone Survivor plays in parts like a slickly-made, beefed-up promotional video for the might of the US armed forces. It even opens with a training montage, made out of documentary footage of all-American badasses putting themselves through hell for Lady Liberty, and absolutely fucking loving it.

Considering part of the film’s M.O. appears to be recruiting cinema-goers, Lone Survivor is a surprisingly brutally realistic take on modern warfare. Thanks to Peter Berg’s raw yet precise directorial style, some convincingly gory makeup effects by Greg Nicotero, and performances from a central acting fourpiece that increasingly smack of desperation, Lone Survivor makes an art of distressing combat conditions. Before the movie ends on a maudlin montage that emphasizes how glorious it is to get slaughtered for your country, Lone Survivor‘s action is brilliantly visceral.