Act of Valor

This is the movie featuring real Navy SEALs (who won't be benefitting from the millions of dollars in ticket sales the movie will make). However, the Navy SEALs deserve better. Ultimately, Act of Valor cynically uses these brave men and women to prop up a C-level movie and try to give it some sort of authenticity and marketing hook.

Roselyn Sanchez stars as Morales - a CIA operative working undercover to compile information about a major drug trafficker, Christo (Alex Veadov). When she is captured, Navy SEAL Team 7 is called in, and they discover Christo is part of a massive terrorist plot to attack the United States.

Will the SEALs save Morales?

Can they act in time to protect U.S. citizens from a heinous act of violence and terror?

Shockingly, for a movie about the most intense human beings on the planet, Act of Valor lacks intensity, spirit, and thrilling action. Despite all efforts from directors Mike "Mouse" McCoy and Scott Waugh, and writer Kurt Johnstad, they do not create characters we become connected to.

Even though everyone involved in Act of Valor is pushing hard for us to embrace the authenticity of what we are watching, it doesn't strike the audience as anything new or compelling. All of the clichés are there, right down to the guy shipping out while his wife has just become pregnant (that cannot be good for his future in a war movie, right? Isn't that like being the guy in the red shirt on Star Trek or the dude in the war movie who shares a touching story about his lady back home and shows us a photo the night before the big attack?).

What we are left with is a movie full of extreme melodrama including many scenes of the SEALs staring solemnly towards the horizon and moving in slow motion while patriotic, dramatic music screams from the speakers.

Also, we get enough stiff, wooden acting to fill several fireplaces in the dead of winter. No one expects the Navy SEALs to be giving Clooney-level performances (I am glad they have training in more important skills), but the real actors are pretty bad, and they have been trained in this stuff. Sanchez and Nestor Serrano, who appears as a fellow CIA agent, are either showing contempt for the material they have been given, or just decided to camp it up.

I admire and respect the real heroes and all of the sacrifices and acts of bravery they conduct each and every day, but this movie would have been better as a Sylvester Stallone-starring, explosion and violence-filled campy action flick.

Act of Valor is rated R for strong violence including some torture, and for language