A war film with the title Lone Survivor obviously forecasts how it will end, but how it gets there is what makes the most violent and yet most moving war movie since Saving Private Ryan worth your time.

Peter Berg’s film chronicles the 2005 mission of a group of Navy SEALS in Afghanistan called Operation Red Wing, focusing a group of four played by Mark Wahlberg; Taylor Kitsch; Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster. The men are sent on a mission in Afghanistan to capture a Taliban chief called Shah. After running into mountain herders connected to Shah they have no choice but to release them according to the rules of engagement. Their release leads to an ambush before they can be rescued. The four fight valiantly but all does not go well. All are shot multiple times while killing dozens of the hundreds of Taliban soldiers who come after them. A rescue helicopter is blown out of the sky. Hirsch; Kitsch and Foster fight valiantly to their deaths. Wahlberg soldiers on alone, but after almost drowning is rescued by Afghan villagers leading to a confrontation between the villagers and the Taliban. Eventually with the villagers’ help he is returned to safety.

Alexander Ludwig and Eric Bana co-star.

The film’s saddest part is the coda that ends the film in which many of the men who lost their lives in Operation Red Wing, including some who are portrayed in the film and some who are not, are pictured in uniform and out. It’s almost unbearable to watch.

Available now on Blu-ray and standard DVD, both feature the same extras including a making-of documentary and an extended pictorial history of the dead of Operation Red Wing that is even more overwhelming in its scope .

The film that Francis Ford Coppola gets the most mail from fans isn’t The Godfather; and isn’t Apocalypse Now. It’s The Outsiders, his 1983 film based on the novel about teenagers written by a teenager, S.E. Hinton, in 1967.

Coppola’s film was the second of three made from Hinton’s works released within the span of little more than a year. It was preceded by Tim Hunter’s 1982 film of Tex and succeeded by Coppola’s film of Rumble Fish. Although all three were well received by critics and audiences alike, the one that has remained the most popular is The Outsiders.

Fans of the novel, however, were not happy with key scenes from the novel that were not in the film. Those scenes, mostly involving star C. Thomas Howell and the actors playing his bothers, Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze, were filmed but not included the film’s initial release which focused on Howell and his friends Ralph Macchio and Matt Dillon along with upper class girl Diane Lane who Howell has a crush on. Lowe and Swayze were relegated to the background as were Emilio Estevez; Tom Cruise and Leif Garrett. Coppola took the fans complaints to heart and restored the missing scenes, which total 22 minutes of screen time, for the film’s 2005 re-release. He also edited out most of his father Carmine Coppola’s operatic score, replacing it with contemporary music more befitting a film about modern teenagers.

The restored version re-titled The Outsiders: The Complete Novel was released on DVD in 2008 with dual commentary tracks, ine by Coppola and one by several of the actors, along with a new documentary featuring Coppola; Howell; Macchio; Lowe; Garrett and Lane. That version has now also been released on Blu-ray.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again. That seems to be Oliver Stone’s take on 2004’s Alexander, his critically lambasted film about the life of Alexander the Great. The film has been variously released on DVD in its theatrical version; in a “director’s” cut; in a “final” cut and now on both Blu-ray and standard DVD in an ”ultimate” cut.

The film ran into some controversy on its initial release, primarily in Greece, the home of Alexander the Great, for its homoerotic undertones suggesting a romance between Alexander (Colin Farrell) and a servant. Both the “final” cut and the “ultimate” cut explore the relationship a little further which neither makes the film better nor worse. Alexander’s sexuality was never the problem from a critical standpoint. The problem was the pacing which is deadly at times and the insufferable acting of Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie as Alexander’s parents, Philip and Olympias, and the snooze worthy performance of Anthony Hopkins as Old Ptolemy Recent Oscar winner Jared Leto co-stars.

If you’ve never seen Alexander, you may want to take a look now that we seem to have the very last version we’re going to get.

Warner Home Video has released a long requested fan favorite, 1938’s Test Pilot, directed by Victor Fleming and starring Clark Gable; Myrna Loy; Spencer Tracy and Lionel Barrymore. A rip-snorting, fast-moving adventure film of the old school, it makes a good double bill with another Gable-Loy film from 1938, Jack Conway’s Too Hot to Handle, also available from Warner Home Video. This one, also about aviatioin, features Gable as a reporter hunting for Loy’s missing pilot brother. Walter Pidgeon and Walter Connolly substitute fro Tracy and Barrymore.

Also available from Warner Home Video is Men of the Fighting Lady, a popular 1954 film about the use of aviation during the Korean War. Van Johnson; Walter Pidgeon; Dewy Martin; Frank Lovejoy and Robert Horton star along with Louis Calhern as author James A. Michener (South Pacific; Sayonara). The film’s signature scene is the one in which Van Johnson guides a suddenly blind fighter pilot (Dewey Martin) into landing his plane on the title aircraft carrier. Never before available on DVD, the VHS version sells for almost $500 new at Amazon.

This week’s new releases include Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Non-Stop.