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    Act of Valor

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
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    “Act of Valor” proves that soldiers aren’t actors and that if you’re going to make a movie out of a gimmick you should ensure that someone has the common sense to stop the project before it becomes a colossal waste of time. I can’t go into the premise of this movie without informing you of the biggest flaw of the movie: the stunts and characters of this film are performed by actual active duty Navy SEALS. That means the lingo, tactics and stunts here are real. Too bad none of these guys can act and the story is so paint-by-numbers that it becomes dreadfully dull.

    The film opens with a terrorist named Abu Shabal (Jason Cottle) blowing up dozens of children and a U. S. ambassador using an ice-cream truck filled with explosives. Oooh! I hate him already! In Costa Rica, a CIA operative who has been gathering evidence against Shabal’s associate, Christo Toykovich (Alex Veadov) is kidnapped by his drug-dealing militia. That’s when we meet our heroes (and by meet I mean they appear on screen and a box containing their stats appears next to their faces) The two main characters are Lieutenant Rorke (Rorke Denver), who informs us that his wife is pregnant with his first child (odds of living through this movie are low!), and Chief Dave (credited as SOC Dave in the credits) The SEALS learn of a most sinister terrorist plot against the greatest country in the history of time and space: the United States of America!

    The most infuriating thing about this movie is that I know there are going to be tons of people out that that will be suckered into loving this cliché-ridden snooze-fest. It’s because the movie pulls every trick in the book to trick you into thinking you like this movie. Take Lieutenant Rorke for example. It’s not enough that he’s a hero, literally; he has a beautiful wife waiting for him at home and she’s pregnant. On top of that, his father died saving other soldiers and he now carries that man’s flag with him on every mission. I half expected Rorke to tell us that he was retiring after this last mission and that he hoped to reconcile with his son whom he hadn’t seen in ten years and the villains to be gay child molesters on top of terrorists and drug dealers.

    The cliché storm is not limited to our heroes, this film goes out of its way to throw in cardboard cutouts for our heroes to fight in the form of Generic Brand Bad Guys. We get maybe one antagonist that gets the slightest bit of character development, the rest are run-of-the-mill baddies, ranging from terrorists to cartel members that are just there to be gunned down by our heroes. The film, knowing fully well that it has no real emotional impact whatsoever (except maybe if you are yourself a Navy SEAL or you went through some kind of war) tries to get around this by dedicating the film to “... warriors of the Naval Special Warfare who have made the ultimate sacrifice since 9/11” and then by listing all of the names of the men and women who have been killed. I’m up for respecting people who have given up their lives as much as the next person (despite not being a red-blooded, baseball-loving resident of America, the beautiful), but notice how this text comes before the end credits, ensuring that unless you walk out early you will feel compelled to sit down and read it. The movie then goes on to play a sad song about giving your life (“For You”, by Keith Urban) while images of smiling children, people holding hands, soldiers and civil officers scroll.

    To the people who thought this movie was emotionally effective, I say that had you not seen those last ten minutes (which have no bearing on the story whatsoever by the way) you would not have liked this movie nearly as much as you claim to. Even if you tried to avoid this montage of emoootion, the movie would still get a leg-up on you by concluding itself with a sad reading of “Live Your Life” by Tecumseh.

    Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about how boring this movie is. The gimmick here is that we’ve got actual Navy SEALS re-enacting the tactics they have learned in a fictional story to demonstrate how awesome they are and how, every day they put their lives on the line for the viewers of this film. Unfortunately, none of the principal characters can act at all so we get don’t get a single emotional moment, exchange of witty dialogue, not even a single funny one-liner or joke to break the ultra-serious tone of this film. Several times throughout the film it feels like the director listened to the people on screen and said “These guys are terrible! There’s no way people will stick around to listen to these awful exchanges of dialogue if they can hear what they’re saying. ” So he proceeded to cut all of their dialogue and put a badly-read voice-over, courtesy of Chief Dave explaining what the guys are talking about instead. To me, it seems like there was probably this awesome script about trials, tribulations, tension and suspenseful action and the director had a vision but then realized that there was no way these guys could pull it off so he watched a bunch of war movies, stitched together his favorite scenes, got rid of every clever bit of dialogue (because those would be too easily traced back to the source they were stolen from) and gave it the “performers”, hoping that in post, it could all be saved. “If I can’t make a good movie, I will trick the people into thinking I did” said directors Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh “We’ll make a movie filled with so many cheap tricks that anyone who dares speak against it will be burned at the stake! The fires will melt away the poorly written story we have here, it will make MILLIONS! ”

    I know some people out there are screaming that some action movies like “Commando” or the latest “Rambo” also featured cartoonish villains that were endlessly mowed down by our favorite action heroes, and also featured... dubious performances at times. That those movies are a lot of fun, so surely a level of realism would make this even better. I say you misunderstand what really made those movies enjoyable, which was the lead actors and the ups and downs you get to make the action exciting. Take for example “Predator”, which featured some sequences of military guys blowing the hell out of some bad guys. Similar to “Act of Valor”. But take a closer look, do you see the difference? That 80’s classic had Arnold Schwarzenegger spouting lines like “Stick around! ” as he threw a knife and impaled a baddie. That break from reality relieved some tension and made the next violent death that much more shocking. It was also dialogue that we could understand and relate to because the guy had a sense of humor and didn’t feel like a mindless robot. Can you make heads or tails of ultra-technical authentic dialogue from these SEALS like “We got about 4.7 clicks at three-five-five” or “Chief, I got a SBT coming up on-step. I got a Raven pushing my pos. ”? I sure can’t. Yet I’m supposed to care what happens? This combined with the fact that the movie is just so serious makes the action numbing. You would hope that maybe it would revel in its violence by giving us buckets of blood or cool kills but no. Every baddie gets either hit square in the middle of the forehead and then falls over dead, or gets hit several times in the chest, screams a bit and then dies. I realize these guys are top of their class and all, but would it be too much to ask for someone to maybe get shot in the temple and have their brains fly out or a shot get them in the neck for some arterial spray or something? The movie doesn’t give you anything at all to be excited about except for a couple of action sequences, which are really well done and tense, in fact so good it makes you wish someone would populate a better movie, perhaps with an actual actor as a lead, with these types of performers to make an exciting movie. As is, we have two main characters that are only distinguishable because of their back stories and are given such limited dialogue (thanks to their bad acting skills) that they are not compelling in the least.

    To give the movie credit, I want to reiterate once again that the action sequences are well done in terms of pyrotechnics, intensity, realism and special effects. It’s enough to jolt you awake in what is unfortunately a dull action movie populated with wooden “actors”, incoherent lingo and an ultra-patriotic tone that tries so hard to get your riled up it becomes a little bit offensive. This was headed pretty quickly for a straight 0 / 5 for me, but thanks to the combat sequences it earns itself a 1 / 5. It’s a terrible movie that I can only “recommend” if you are yourself an active Navy SEAL, you haven’t seen a movie in so long you can’t remember what acting is like and you are not able to access any war/shooter video game movies. (On Dvd, May 9, 2014)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  7.2.2015 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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