Act of Valor

[DanielNash 11]

I know I've been kind of sieging the forums in the past hour (I'm a recent listener who's fallen in love with the show), but I'd be remiss if I didn't suggest Act of Valor. It's the America, Fuck Yeah action movie perhaps best known for starring real-life Navy SEALS. If it weren't for that fact, I'm confident the movie would have been a direct-to-DVD release. Some of the action scenes are actually pretty cool, but otherwise the movie is total WTF. May I present:

• The general promotional premise. I heard a Fox News interview with the directors/producers/doesn't really matter, in which they said the movie began with traditional actors and Navy SEAL consultants, but that the creators decided if they used actors, they wouldn't be telling the SEALs story. But consider this: the soldiers aren't playing themselves, they're not recreating a true life mission, and many of the plot happenings are wildly implausible.
  
• The wooden under-acting and crazy over-acting that lets you identify the SEAL actors from the "actors."
  
• Grenades that destroy entire city blocks.
  
• Surprising levels of anti-semitism. The two main bad-guys are a Jewish drug runner and an Islamic terrorist who you find out was converted from Judaism--and the script goes far out of its way to point that out.
  
• A soldier is shown in montage to have a huge "God Bless America" patch on his helmet. That patch is never shown again, even though he's still wearing the helmet immediately after the scene.
  
• The bad guy's snidely whiplash laugh in the first scene of the movie.
  
• The plot revolves around new explosive jackets filled with ceramic ball bearings to avoid metal detection. The scheme is described along the lines of "Seven 9/11s"
  

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

I saw bits and pieces of this thing at my theater (I'm sure I'll Netflix it soon), and the thing that I found most offensive was that this movie and the marketing around it seemed to designed to make you look like an America-hating asshole if you didn't like the movie or criticized the performances by the non-actors in the film. And let me see if I have this right: They wanted to play up the authenticity of the real SEALs, but then it's still your typical cliche-ridden actioner where you just KNOW the guy with the family or baby on the way isn't going to be walking out of this thing...

[neilly 105]

If Act of Valor doesn't crack $100,000,000 the terrorists win.

[sillstaw 414]

I recall an Internet acquaintance retweeting at the time, "ACT OF VALOR, it's cute how hard you try. I'll be over here with my tougher friend, RESTREPO."

 

One of my friends who's actually served in the military loved the movie and claimed it was one of the best, most accurate films about Navy SEALs he'd ever seen. He also was very eager to see "Atlas Shrugged" when it came out. Draw your own conclusions.

 

ETA: The Internet acquaintance also tweeted, "It only now crystallized in my mind that ACT OF VALOR is the non-ironic TEAM AMERICA that we've been waiting for." Which says it all. (I should also add I haven't seen the movie, because when you loudly brag about how your movie stars real Navy SEALs, it just makes me think you couldn't get any real actors interested.)

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

I was in the Air Force from October 1996-October 2000, probably THE least eventful 4-year stretch of the last 20-odd years. I'd like to see a movie about THAT. Of course, it would probably have to be a comedy. An intentional comedy, I mean, not something like "Act of Valor".