"Lone Survivor" Lead Up: Best War Movie & Worst Mark Wahlberg Performance

            

            Lone Survivor will be hitting theaters this weekend, so as a lead up to it, I will be saying my favorite war film of all time and my favorite performance/film given by the primary star of the film, Mark Wahlberg. I will start with my choice of Mark Wahlberg’s worst performance to get that out of the way.

Worst Mark Wahlberg Performance: The Happening

            The Happening is not only the film in which Mark Wahlberg gives the worst performance of his career so far, but it is also the worst movie Mark Wahlberg has ever been in, in my opinion. It is an awful film that I will not discuss. I will only discuss Wahlberg’s performance. His performance is horrible, but it is not his fault. Every actor in that movie is horrible. It is the director’s fault. It is M. Night Shyamalan’s fault. He apparently has lost his sense of how to work with actors by now. I have no idea what he tells them to do, but he is able to get the worst performance possible out of them. Though, it is not only his working with the actors that is the problem, the script leaves nothing for the actors to work off of. Every line is absolutely horrible, so the acting has a huge possibly to already be at least bad, but Shyamalan’s loss of sense while filmmaking has made Mark Wahlberg’s, and every else’s in this film, performance as terrible as they can be.

Best War Movie: Saving Private Ryan

            Saving Private Ryan is one of Steven Spielberg’s masterpieces. It is an excellent movie with beautifully crafted action scenes that hit stop-on in every aspect for the sequences to be some of the best of all time. There is not one flaw in the crafting of these sequences. Everything is perfect to make the sequences as realistic and as intense as possible. Though, the action is not the only amazing thing in this film. It illustrates the moral dilemmas of war and all of the moral complexities of war, which is due to the excellent acting and excellent script. Every character is extremely well developed and they all mean something to the film. Tom Hanks and Matt Damon give excellent performance as their characters and so do all of the supporting roles. Not once in the 169 minute running time the film ever get boring or dull. This would be in the list of my top ten favorite movies of all time.