DEMAND TO SEE ‘LONE SURVIVOR’ SO HEAVY, MULTISCREEN TEXAS THEATER CANCELS ALL OTHER MOVIES

We men like them thar war movies and action flicks here in Texas. We dig actors like Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Sly Stallone, Vin Diesel, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis and other action stars, but we just don’t cotton to them girlie-men types.

WE LIKE WAR MOVIES IN EAST TEXAS … MAYBE A LITTLE TOO MUCH
By Jeff Balke

Houston Press Hair Balls
January 15, 2014

A good movie is a good movie, whether it's a romantic comedy, a drama or an animated feature. It can be about love or hate, war or peace, joy or sadness. It's all in how it gets its point across. In the case of Lone Survivor, it's the story Marcus Luttrell, the surviving member of a team of Navy Seals that fought in a dramatic battle in Afghanistan. By all accounts, it is an excellent film and a solid performance by Mark Wahlberg as Luttrell. But, was it so good that it trumped every other film in an entire theater? Apparently so.

According to reports, a theater in Conroe, so besieged by people wanting to see the movie, canceled the performance of every other film so fans could see Lone Survivor. That's pretty remarkable, unless you are from East Texas and you understand that the God, guts and glory that comes with a film like this one is a perfect storm for a theater in Montgomery County, a hotbed of conservative thought, Jesus and guns.

The film supposedly doesn't preach any of that, but it isn't much of a shocker that, with the intense trailers, it would get a few people in that neck of the woods worked up enough to want after it.

Still, this isn't Saving Private Ryan or even Inglorious Bastards. It's not Zero Dark Thirty another taught thriller about Navy Seals. None of those closed down theaters, but none of those had Wahlberg holding a grenade to the face of his enemy and saying in breathless desperation, "I don't go home, you don't go home" either. It is the sort of perfect combination of flag-waving patriotism mixed with clearly undeniable bravery in the face of horrible adversity that would make anyone want to bust out a country song and put your hand over your heart.

No word on if the theater sung the National Anthem after each performance or required the Pledge of Allegiance for attendance, but anything is possible in East Texas.