Act of Valor

It has taken me a little while to gather my thoughts on Act of Valor. It is a movie acted primarily by active U.S. Navy SEALS telling the story of an impending attack on the States and the actions that the SEALS take in order to prevent it. 


My problem with rating it is that I couldn't make up my mind on what type of movie it is. Is it a drama? Is it a war movie? Is it an action flick for the Call of Duty generation? Each possibilities has its own positives and negatives about it, but despite this, I kept asking myself, "Did the movie come together as a whole of its lesser components?" To answer that, I'll switch up my review style today and look at each component separately:

AS A DRAMA: This is easily the film's weakest leg, and one of the main reasons that using active soldiers to portray the characters may have not been the best idea. Their delivering of lines is stiff and forced, and any time they laugh it felt almost comically fake. Whenever they stare blankly into space as if pondering life's greater meaning, they look uncomfortable. Hell, even the voice over throughout parts of the movie is poorly acted. Overall, these men were not trained to be actors and honestly, you can't deny it, it shows. Except for one.

"Yeah...my s**t meter is full."

The above photo illustrates what is easily the best acted and one of the most daunting scenes in the movie. A SEAL by the name of Senior must interrogate a newly-captured smuggler and he does a fantastic job going from being the nice guy, to the sympathetic one, to the funny one, to the crazy one. It was a very convincing performance further propelled by the dialogue. When a person aiding terrorists makes a claim that this new attack will make 9/11 look like a "walk in the f**king park", you tend to listen up. Likewise, the other bad guy in the film, I call him the bald-bearded-dude, is excellent and his temper tantrum that he throws is as real as it is convincing.


I found that with the lack of acting skills, I was not connected to the characters. I did not get emotional when one would die, and that bothered me. But somehow, out of nowhere, the last 5 minutes got to me and I was choking up...I guess I was invested in these guys after all. DRAMA: 5.5/10

Ex-cit-ing.

AS A WAR MOVIE: If the movie's acting was the SEALS' weak spot, then their professionalism and accuracy-of-portrayal during the war scenes was their strength. And my was it impressive. I was never bored of the skydiving scenes; they were filmed perfectly. Going into the movie I thought that I would be overwhelmed with technical jargon, but surprisingly, the movie presents itself in a very understandable matter and any SEAL-lingo that comes up is pretty much defined on the spot. The story it tells is generic in a post-9/11 world but it just seems so damn real because it is not far fetched in the slightest. Let's just say that if it really is that easy to try to attack our country, then God bless the people who have been continuously preventing it from happening. 


As are most war movies, it is violent, and I found myself surprised by what the movie would actually show without panning away, but it made it that much more intense. Paired with the violence is the war-movie cliches and Act of Valor doesn's skimp on those either, but at the same time, I'm not sure you can make many war movies without them. WAR MOVIE: 8/10

A hard scene to watch...and it's the opening one.

AS AN ACTION MOVIE: I was surprised by some of the gimmicks that Act of Valor used. A large portion of the action scenes are filmed in first-person and quite honestly, I could not stop thinking about Call of Duty. Which I don't think is a good thing for a movie that is touting its realism. But nonetheless, it was an entertaining point of view, albeit used far too much. Act of Valor succeeds in knowing when to use slow motion and when not to, and I found myself consistently impressed by the some of the cinematography during the action scenes. But then again, there were scenes at night where I could hardly tell what was going on due to poor lighting so it seems to even out. ACTION MOVIE: 7/10

The best action scene of the movie

So what is Act of Valor? It's certainly not a very compelling drama other than a few scenes and the last 5 minutes. It's a decent war movie with an unprecedented amount of realism. And as an action movie it succeeds on some levels and fails on some others. 


I'll tell you what type of movie Act of Valor is. It's a patriotic one. It's the movie that United States citizens need to see to remind us why we have to live our lives and our days to the fullest. It's a film that reminds us what is necessary in order to protect our country and our freedom while the stinging memory of what happens when we fail is left in the back of our minds. It's a film that serves to show the American people just how easy it is for us to be attacked and to not forget that we are always a target. A saddening notion sure, but true nonetheless. But most of all, Act of Valor is a film that makes us proud to be Americans and makes us appreciate the liberties and privileges we have by being citizens of this great country. And isn't that just the type of encouragement and reminder that our country needs right now? PATRIOTIC FILM: 10/10


Pros:

• A movie that every American should see at some point. Reminds you of a lot of the good qualities our country holds despite all the crap we always hear about in the media
• Destined to be one of the most accurately portrayed war films of all time without being over the top
• Real, intense action scenes and shocking terrorism scenes make you realize that this film doesn't joke around
• Story is easy to understand and portrayed well. Some scary stuff portrayed by well-acted villains. Senior is the best-acted SEAL
• The beginning is phenomenal stuff, the middle is still decent, and the ending is great as well

Cons:

• Atrocious acting. You can't deny it no matter how much you love SEALs
• Hit and miss soundtrack. At times it is reminiscent of The Dark Knight background music, and other times it is as common as common can get
• War cliches. They are there and they are proud
• The first-person view is cool...for about 2 minutes. I half expected there to be a first-person bathroom scene there was so much of it

Rath's Review Score: 9/10

Thank you to all that have served our country's military in the past, present, or future. 

Damn Few.