After a string of anti-war, anti-military (and arguably anti-American) war movies, Hollywood finally gets it right. The Navy SEAL drama “Act of Valor” opens tomorrow in theaters nationwide.
Starring active-duty members of the elite commando unit and based on real events, the film is a bracing reminder of the war films Tinseltown used to make — and, if it scores, will be making again.
Why? It’s the patriotism, stupid. A bunch of flops near the end of the Bush administration — “Rendition” (CIA meanies coercing confessions), “Redacted” (US soldiers acting brutally), “In the Valley of Elah” (war’s dehumanizing effects) — was Hollywood’s way of trying to “end the war.” But the public rejected them all. As a rule, anti-war war movies just don’t sell,and “nuance” doesn’t cut it on a realbattlefield.
You won’t find much nuance in “Act of Valor,” which strings together modeled-on-real-life SEAL (SEa, Air, Land) operations in a Russian-Muslim plot to unleash suicide bombers on US targets.
The straight-arrow good guys — played, at their request, by unnamed SEALs — are very good; the snarling bad guys (professional actors) are thoroughly rotten, and there’s zero time spent analyzing whether the villains’ “grievances” are legitimate or whether their daddies didn’t love them.
The script by Kurt Johnstad starts with the kidnapping and murder of a pair of CIA agents. Next comes a daring rescue-and-extraction operation, then a psychologically chilling interrogation (notably for its complete absence of violence) and a global manhunt, including a dazzling landing aboard a surfaced sub in mid-ocean — all wrapping up in a rain of gunfire inside a smuggler’s tunnel beneath the US-Mexican border.
Will it be a hit? “Want to see” tracking numbers are high, and the Navy — which cooperated with producer/directors Scott Waugh and Mike McCoy — expects SEAL recruitment to soar after its release.
“We believe that these men have been misrepresented for so long, and their story deserves to be told authentically and accurately,” said Waugh.
Ever since Vietnam, Hollywood’s message has been: Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be soldiers. “Act of Valor” hits the reset button on that notion.
The “blame America first” crowd will sneer at the SEALs’ quiet love ofGod, their families and their brothers “down range,” but anyone who’s spent a minute around real servicemen will know how true it rings.
The film’s authenticity stands out down the line. The weapons and the tactics shown in the film are real, and some sequences were shot using live ammunition, because that’s how the SEALs roll in training. Nobody flies through the air, hangs by one arm off 100-story buildings or somersaults while firing a machine gun. Everything the guys do in this film are things real humans can do. That may be the coolest thing of all.
At a time when special-operations units like the SEALs and Delta Force aren’t only the tip of the spear but, in many ways, the spear itself, the country needs to understand that their mission and their tough tactics are morally legitimate.
Waugh says no sequel is planned, but that could change quickly. “Our target audiences are Americans who are proud to call themselves Americans,” he said. Let’s see how many of them show up at the box office this weekend.