Lone Survivor burns with the fever of a passion project. Writer-director Peter Berg s gratitude to United States servicemen for all their sacrifice comes through viscerally, from first frame to last. The film opens with a long montage of real-life Navy SEALs in training and ends with a slide show of SEALs and soldiers living full, happy lives off-duty, set to an emotional power ballad. What s in between amounts to The Passion of the Christ for U.S. servicemen: a bloody historic episode recounted mainly in images of hardy young men being ripped apart, at screeching volume. Though Berg s source material isn t the New Testament, he often handles Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell s account (via ghostwriter Patrick Robinson) of his doomed 2005 reconnaissance mission with the thunderous reverence Mel Gibson brought to Christ s crucifixion and resurrection.