Act of Valor / **½ (R)

U.S. Navy SEAL Team 7: Bandito Platoon

Shabal: Jason Cottle

Cristo: Alex Veadov

Jackie Engle: Alisa Marshall

Relativity Media presents a film directed by Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh. Written by Kurt Johnstad. Running time: 111 min. Rated R (for strong violence including some torture, and for language).

My father was a U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot. He passed away last year after a brief battle with cancer that ravaged his body quickly. When he got sick, he kept a positive outlook. He never complained about what was happening to him. When it got to the point that he realized he wasn’t going to pull through, he accepted it and expected everyone else to do the same. He faced his death as his military training had prepared him, with dignity and as an uncompromising fact of life. He had served his time and served it well. He died like the Marine he was.

The new movie “Act of Valor” is dedicated to the men of the U.S. Navy Special Forces and all military personnel who have given their lives in the service of their country. It honors all soldiers. I mention my father in this review to show that I have the utmost respect for the service these men provide to our country. I’m fearful of the world that might thrive if these men weren’t dedicated to protecting the freedoms of our country. I understand what kind of person it takes to commit such sacrifice for our country. I mean no disrespect for what these men do.

That being said, “Act of Valor” is a bold experiment that succeeds in many of its aspects, but fails from a dramatic standpoint. Filmmakers Scott Waugh and Mike McCoy, through their work making recruiting films for the Navy, conceived of a military action drama starring active duty Navy SEALs. The Navy backed their idea and required SEALs to participate in the film. SEAL Team 7 is featured in the movie, including the starring roles. Their training makes them the best-suited people around to pull off authentic action scenes based on military maneuvers. It does not prepare them, however, to convincingly portray dramatic characters within a cinematic story arc.

At the moment, I haven’t been able to find the names of the men portraying SEAL Team 7 in this movie, most likely because they are still active members of the unit. Perhaps this is good when discussing the acting in the film. I’ll start off by saying they aren’t the worst actors I’ve seen in legitimate dramatic movies, but they do prove the point that acting isn’t as easy as it seems. They’ve got the love of their country down. They’ve got the tactical language down. They’ve got camaraderie mastered. Their personal dialogue and emotional output is a little wooden, however. This unfortunately leads to a lack of emotional impact for the whole of the film.

I won’t place the entire blame on the SEALs’ untrained acting. The script, provided by “300” screenwriter Kurt Johnstad, is clichéd and lacks any real emotional depth in itself. Even the scenes involving professional actors are mired with posturing and simplistic ideals in storytelling. The villain (Jason Cottle, “The Wedding Singer”), a terrorist who plans an attack on U.S. soil, is like something out of a James Bond movie. He flies off the handle at his own conspirators and his motivations don’t seem to have much conviction behind them beyond “Death to the infidels!”

The plot seems like something inspired more by Hollywood than actual terrorist activities. The terrorists have devised a bomb device that I’m sure is out of every bomb makers’ dreams, but seems unlikely to really exist. Perhaps these types of devices do exist and finding them and shutting them down is part of what SEALs do on a regular basis. I am not one to judge about that. Since this was made with real SEALs in the roles of the heroes deployed to stop such plots, I’m willing to believe that James Bond might be closer to the truth than we’d all like to think.

What the movie gets right, however, are the actual missions these men execute. The action sequences are nothing less than stunning. The first rescue mission is a fascination to watch. Everything the SEAL Team does, even when they have to change the plan, is incredibly calculated. There are mistakes, but they are effortlessly accounted for with adjustments that could only be conceived by professionals. Their use of strategy against their opponents is awesome. Their detachment is a tool that serves their missions. Seeing them at work is like seeing a different kind of art than the acting for which I’m critical.

I wonder how the filmmakers could’ve made this movie differently so they could achieve their objective of making Hollywood style action sequences with dramatic elements surrounding them that worked better. Perhaps a documentary style would’ve served their purposes better. They could stage the action, as the filmmakers do in the climbing documentary “Touching the Void”. This would allow for the same impact of the harrowing nature of what these men do. Then the filmmakers could fill in around the staged sequences with traditional documentary footage that showed the SEALs in a more genuine light than the scripted words do.

My father always told me that during the Vietnam War, the scariest experience he had was running into an iguana blocking his way to the latrine one day. Like the men in this movie, I’m sure what my father experienced in the military went far beyond the horrors of facing a giant lizard. The fact that they face their duty with such valor requires our respect and deserves all the honor we can bestow upon them. “Act of Valor” may not be a great achievement in cinema, but it honors great men whose efforts might otherwise go unnoticed.