Sunday, February 26, 2012

Act of Valor - 2 stars

The makers of Act of Valor want to make sure you know that the actors portraying Navy SEALs in this movie are all active duty SEALs in real life. The directors tell us before the movie starts that only people who have experienced the kind of stuff we see in the movie can accurately portray it. Um, no. I have seen more convincing performance by actors in other Hollywood movies.

The movie is about a Navy SEAL team that goes in to Costa Rica to rescue a kidnapped CIA Analyst. The first 20 minutes or so are excruciating. The writing is bad, the directing is bad, the editing is bad, and the acting is horrible. This is the most amaturish movie I have ever seen.

Then the team gets into the mission, and the movie suddenly gets good. I don't know how accurate it is, but there are things in this movie I have never seen before. Like the way a sniper takes out a guart. He waits until his partner is ready to catch the body so it doesn't fall into the water and make a splash. The gun boats that meet the team at the extraction point are very cool. The bad guys drive up in trucks and are torn to shreds by the guns on these boats.

The action is great. But they should have had the SEAL team act as advisors, and used actors to portray the team.

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