[Infowarrior] - more on ....'Act Of Valor' And The Military's Long Hollywood Mission 'Act Of Valor' And The Military's Long Hollywood Mission

[Richard Forno]

(from a well-placed DOD friend --rick)

http://www.americancinemathequecalendar.com/content/act-of-valor-0

I call this movie "SEAL porn". It's like somebody (probably the Navy PAO and LCDR in the credits) had a checklist of all the cool tactics the SEALs use and handed that to the screenwriter with orders to "put all this stuff in the movie". And indeed we get it all: HALO, HAHO, night ops with IR gear, snipers with suppressor, water approaches, CQB and house take downs, underway ship takedowns, boat insertions with helicopters, boat extractions with helicopters, interrogations, sneak and peek, hop and pop, landing on an underway nuclear sub, launching a SDV (swimmer delivery vehicle) from the sub, sat phones, .50 cal machine guns, .30 cal machine guns, M4 carbines, sniper rifles, rockets, frag grenades, the list goes on and I'm sure you get the picture. I don't think anything was left out. Three acts of notable real-life heroism were called out by the Navy for the filmmakers to put in the movie, and those are there.

That said, I like porn as much as the next guy and this is great porn. Their last really good porn movie before this one was Top Gun. The Navy makes good porn.

I had looked up the background of the movie on the website and saw that it started life as a recruiting video. It's interesting how that turned into a full length feature, but even more interesting that the filmmakers last night didn't mention it at all. They did emphasize how "the taxpayers didn't spend a dime" or words to that effect, and went into considerable detail to describe how everything on the screen was shot during regular training operations that the filmmakers were allowed to shoot. (I'm sure some economists would be able to parse a cost from having 25 people on whichever ship they were on when they shot the landing on the surfaced submarine that was underway. But I digress.)

The plot was fairly transparent, but it was professionally constructed with appropriate evil geniuses who get caught by the righteousness, fortitude, and wholesomeness of the good guys. I guess I have to commend the filmmaker for weaving all the various heroic acts and checklist of SEAL tactics into a coherent narrative lasting about 90 minutes. Also, the filmmakers said they started by shooting 35mm for standard scenes and Canon 5D for action, but the latter turned out so well that they soon shot the whole thing on 5D cameras. So this is undoubtedly the next step in the demise of polyester film with silver halide.

So for us adults it's a fun movie unless one really doesn't like this kind of recruiting film. And I can't recommend it for anybody who doesn't like SEAL porn.


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Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.