Act of Valor review

I've only ever fallen asleep in a movie THREE times.

First time I was like ten and it was in a drive-in. I can't even remember the movie's name. But my parents do...

Second time I had just gotten back from a month of back-packing through Europe and was EXHAUSTED.

FULL DISCLOSURE:

I FELL ASLEEP DURING THE MIDDLE OF ACT OF VALOR...ABOUT 45 MINUTES.

Here's the thing...I wasn't that tired. I could feel the sleep coming and I actually signed off on it.

This movie is THAT BAD.

I stayed awake for the first 20-40 minutes and awoke to watch the last 30 minutes. So maybe that makes me an unreliable reviewer. But personally, I think it speaks volumes about the quality of the flick.

Elephant in the room? The acting is atrocious. It's so bad it makes my heart hurt just remembering it.

Of course it's bad. The "actor's" in the piece are non-active Navy Seals.

This is the first mistake within the movie. Because, I'm sorry, but the question must be asked, why? I've seen the behind-the-scenes docs that tell us how the filmmakers wanted to make an extremely realistic Navy Seal movie and didn't want to fake anything. They supposedly thought about using actors but then realized it'd be better to use the real guys.

I smell bullshit.

 This all begs the question, is this a legitimate movie or was this nothing more than a promotional/recruitment video from the start?

It certainly seems like it was. From the ultra-militaristic dialogue and demeanor of the "characters" to the video game-like filming of the action sequences (I swear to GOD, the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare first-person-style shooting is used too many times to count) everything seems geared towards filing the sheep in.

The GOD-AWFUL monologue is the worst offender. Voiced-over by an absolutely ZERO-charismatic Seal with almost no respect for a child's upbringing and/or respect for life (you have to see the movie to understand-but please, don't bother) the movie GRINDS to a halt and leaves you wondering why they didn't use real actor's for the roles.

And therein lies the reason that I hate this movie.

When you shoot a movie you watch what is called "dailies". These are rough cut pieces of what you filmed for the day. As you get closer to finishing the movie, editing begins, and then you really get to see what you have. You finish editing, you produce the film on large scale. You fix any problems with it in post-production (which these days could mean CGI-edits, and such) and the film is printed.

NEVER AT ONE POINT ANYONE IN THE PRODUCTION REALIZED THEY HAD A FLYING PIECE OF SHIT!?

So either:

A: The film producers were making an obvious propaganda-film - which is odd since our troops are being recalled and the "war" is seemingly over (for the moment).

OR

B: The film producers had no idea what they were doing and legitimately tried to make a very realistic-action flick.

I'm rolling with A.

I don't think there was any grand conspiracy here. If anything, I feel the military got taken advantage of. This film was shot when we were still heavily at "war" and there was not any obvious sign that we were leaving the Middle East. I think the film producers probably thought, "hey we'll shoot a movie like a Call of Duty video game and make a shit ton of movie from doing so while having help from the military in both cooperation and fronting the bill...YAY us!" 

The result:

A MOVIE THAT MAKES EVERYONE LOOK BAD...INCLUDING THE VIEWER.

This really is a piece of shit. I hope you never watch it. Even the action is boring.

It's boring because you don't care.

How can you care about these monotonous drones that speak their dialogue with such malcontent and in an Anakin Skywalker-like tone? How can you care about these cliche' characters that are played like Ancient Roman soldiers yet come off as testosterone-fueled ex-jocks that never got over their High School crush?

I get rooting for our soldiers...I have no problem with that. But this is a movie, I can root for a guy wearing an American flag on his shoulder for a scene or two, but do you actually expect me to stay focused on dumb action (that isn't even shot well) for over an hour when I don't care about the stakes, the cost, or the people involved?

This movie doesn't get a rating out of 10.

It get's a: