Wednesday, November 30, 2011

"Act of Valor" Review

As noted the other week, I was invited to attend a special sneak preview of Act of Valor, which will be released for general audiences on February 17 of next year.  Although I really enjoyed the movie, a busy schedule with the day job and an untimely case of writer’s block prevented me from putting my thoughts down on paper (or on bytes . . . whatever).  Then this weekend I took my five-year old to see The Muppets.  Although the movies are polar opposites, noticing which gags nearly sent him out of his chair in convulsions of laughter and which jokes were too self-referential for anybody under thirty to understand, the light bulb went off as to what worked and what didn’t in Act of Valor -- and how to do the latter film justice.
The movie has already attracted a good deal of attention because of its gimmick of casting active duty Navy SEALs as the film’s heroes and its unabashedly kick-ass trailer. (Act of Valor, that is, not The Muppets, although the latter does involve a scene where Miss Piggy et al don ninja-gear to abduct a Hollywood star).  Act of Valor follows “Bandito” Platoon of the fictional SEAL Team 7 as it conducts a hostage rescue of a kidnapped CIA operative in Central America, during which they recover a cell phone that leads them to a wanted arms dealer/smuggler.  The subsequent manhunt uncovers a plan for a terrorist attack intended to rival 9/11, and as the intelligence puzzle is put together, “Bandito” platoon is forced to race against the clock in a series of missions on the high seas, Somalia, and finally in a climactic subterranean shootout on the U.S.-Mexico border.
As I watched the movie, I tried to imagine how critics would react to it as opposed to the members of the Special Operations community and guests who comprised the D.C. audience.  I think critics will point out that none of the SEALs are likely to challenge Leonardo DiCaprio or George Clooney for Best Actor at next year’s Oscars.  Apart from the action sequences – in which the SEALs utilize real-life tactics they have rehearsed and executed countless times – the acting is slightly wooden . . . although no worse than Ashton Kutcher anytime he tries to play anything other than a dumb guy. 
Critics will also likely bemoan the relative lack of character development.  Although two early scenes quickly introduce Bandito’s SEALs and establish that they have families they must leave behind (and especially that the team leader’s wife is pregnant with their first child), the team members are virtually indistinguishable throughout the rest of the film, so much so that only three of the eight SEALs are identifiable.  This may keep some critics/viewers from feeling invested in the fate of the characters, yet for anybody who has deployed in the last decade -- or for the family and spouses of those service members -- these brief scenes will resonate deeply.  (Full disclosure: I deployed to Iraq when the aforementioned five-year old was ten days old, so the scene with the team leader leaving his pregnant wife struck a personal chord . . . and I think somebody was peeling onions somewhere in the theater).
These shortcomings aside, Act of Valor works, and works well.  At heart, it is neither an action movie nor a war movie, per se, but rather a battle movie in the vein of Zulu or Black Hawk Down.  The characters' back stories or how the central conflict (in this case, the broader War on Terror) emerged are secondary to the immediacy of the bullets flying around them.  And once those bullets start flying, Act of Valor excels. 
The action sequences are exhilarating and gorgeously shot.  The camera films the action from relatively unique perspectives and angles, which provide the audience with a visceral sense of immediacy.  This is not surprising given the background of directors Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh in filming action sports, the aesthetic of which conveys well to the firefights and raids Bandito platoon conducts.  The movie was originally conceived as a promotional documentary for the SEALs, and the adrenaline rush experienced during the battle sequences was comparable to the Paris Island scenes of Full Metal Jacket on the big screen.  (Well, at least up until that whole demented murder-suicide thing).  They are fast-paced and riveting without seeming contrived or melodramatic. 
Act of Valor’s production team obviously placed significant emphasis on conveying as much realism as possible within the confines of a two-hour narrative, and (as far as I can tell) achieved this successfully. In fact, from an analytical perspective, I only had a few technical criticisms.  I think some brief, early montage illustrating the difficulty of the BUD/S course -- which typically has dropout rates of over 90% -- would have been more effective than the film’s opening exposition in establishing how extraordinary the men of Bandito platoon (and all real-life SEALs) are.  (Although, granted, the opening soliloquy is lump-in-the-throat chill).  The movie may also have benefitted from slowing down the action a bit, as is so rapidly paced that the raids almost bleed into one another, leaving the viewer breathless.  A slightly more detailed depiction of the planning and rehearsals that are the hallmark of “Tier One” SOF units – which is a large reason for their deadly efficiency – would have given the audience a chance to reset after each mission.  Finally, one could quibble about whether it is realistic that the same SEAL team would conduct missions over such a widely dispersed geographic area rather than passing the intel on to another team, or whether the Mexican cartels would really help Islamic extremists conduct another 9/11 (and hence paint an extremely large target on themselves), but such simplifications were clearly necessary to drive the plot forward.   
Ultimately, these critiques are akin to complaining that Elrond delivers the sword Anduril to Aragorn in the cinematic version of Return of the King rather than his fellow Rangers as in the novel . .  . either way, the movie still rocks.  Act of Valor is highly entertaining and lives up to the promise suggested by its thrilling promotional campaign.  Moreover, it is a much-needed break from Hollywood’s unbearably patronizing treatment of the U.S. military since 9/11, in which U.S. troops are alternately depicted as either marauders or as victims instead of heroes.  Although a work of fiction, Act of Valor is an exciting stand-in for the innumerable stories of real-life courage and sacrifice that have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past decade but will never make it to the big screen.

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