With heavy breathing, crazed eyes and blood dripping down their faces, four men attempt to save themselves from the horror of being captured by the Taliban. Lone Survivor, directed by Peter Berg, creates a raw emotion in the viewer, the instinct and will to survive.

Based on a true story featured in the novel Lone Survivor, four Navy SEALs, Marcus Luttrell (Mark Whalberg), Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) and Matt ‘Axe’ Axelson (Ben Foster), set out on mission Operation Red Wings. The goal is to assassinate an important leader of the Taliban, Ahmad Shah. While the four men reside in the mountains of Afghanistan preparing for the assassination, the mission is compromised. This forces the team to retreat up the mountain only to find that the mountain is now occupied by Taliban forces. The men fight valiantly, protecting one another as if they were brothers. As stated by the title, only one of the four members survives the onslaught by the Taliban.Finally, the remaining SEAL member escapes the mountains. He is taken in by a man called Gulab of a nearby Pashtun village. He surprisingly finds kindness in a world or hatred toward America. This kindness alone is what ultimately saves his life.

This movie had my stomach churning and my hands sweating. Although it is rated R and gory at times, I didn’t want to look away. This movie opened my eyes to the brutality of war, but at the same time, the kindness that can come from someone helping a human in need.

Stuck in Love is the story of an acclaimed writer, his ex-wife and their teenaged children coming to terms with the complexities of love over the course of a tumultuous year.

William Borgens (Greg Kinnear) is a two-time PEN/Faulkner award–winning author who stalks his ex-wife two years after their divorce. He pays his children to keep journals so that they’ll focus writing rather than working the common high school job of flipping hamburgers. His daughter Samantha (Lily Collins) is a sworn cynic who rejects any men who show any sort of sincerity or good intentions, and his son, Rusty (Nat Wolff), is a high school introvert who stays home to write poems on Friday nights.

Stuck in Love represents the stasis of William’s life; as he is unable to move on without ex-wife Erica (Jennifer Connelly) who struggles with the hostility she feels from Samantha who despises her for the divorce. They are all drowning in their own emotional holdings. The rest of the characters’ job  is to throw out their life boats; guiding the misguided, in the hopes that they will reach the surface.

As director-writer Josh Boone fills the movie with many intelligent characters who must break from the state of uncertainty and misconception of love, the intended equilibrium is sadly thrown by the rather bumpy and rushed conclusion to the plot. Yet, although this romantic dramedy attempts to ram pack enough drama and plot changes for an entire season’s worth of TV episodes in an hour and a half, its endearing performances capture the audience, making it still rewarding.