Posted on 02/26/2012 4:00:36 AM PST by Kaslin
Finally, a 21st century movie that doesn’t portray our military as corrupt, stupid, confused torturers who murder innocent babies.
Act of Valor, which opened this weekend, features active (and anonymous) Navy SEALs in the re-creation of real events that showcase our crème de la crème rescuing our operatives and crushing our enemies in an OMG type of way.
I’ve got two words for the manner in which our boys were depicted in this flick … Sa-lute!
If I were a wannabe enemy of the U.S.A. (foreign or domestic) I’d be crapping my cargo pants (or tunic) after viewing Act of Valor—chiefly because our special forces are some bad mamajambas who have the tools and the tenacity to jack you up.
Yep, be afraid, villains, as our troops are effective ministers of God poised, ready and willing with stealth and style to inflict the wrath of God on those who do evil. I’m talkin’ Romans 13:1-5 style. Look it up if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Another thing that I truly enjoyed about this film was the unambiguous patriotism of the soldiers and their families. Yep, no whining about their missions from their families or the SEALs who sacrificed their lives and limbs for God and country. It almost felt like I was in America again as I watched this movie. It was weird—but a good weird.
Even though it’s shocking to see our troops displayed in a magnificent manner within this Occuculture that loathes them, it was not a shocker to me; I have had the good fortune to spend time with many of our special ops and other soldiers in hunting camps from Alaska to Texas and have found them just as the movie displayed them: consummate class acts without a hint of the BS Hollyweird has smeared them with over the last decade.
I can’t say enough good things about this movie. In the theater in which my wife and I watched it we spotted several older gents and couples who sat in their seats and silently wept as the credits rolled. It was sacred.
I’m sure all the scabs and the venomous wood lice of the Left are going to crawl out from under the rocks where they dwell and bash this war pic, but that’s alright. Our SEALs and others have afforded you the right to be stupid and bray your insanity by keeping bad guys at bay, both at home and abroad, and thereby giving you the wherewithal to play your silly and ungrateful games against our fair land.
Lastly, parents, take your teenagers to see Act of Valor. Maybe, just maybe, some of the courage, patriotism and dignity depicted in this film will erase the film this crappy culture has slimed your kid with.
God bless America, our warriors who protect her, and those involved with this movie. Amen.
At IMDB.com, the audience rating reflecs the opinions of perhaps 200 - 20,000 audience reviewers. About 200 is the minimum number of ratings to get an average than means anything; anything less is liable to be manipulated by campaigning.
The "Metascore" is a numerical score reflecting a scalar scoring of the critics' reviews in the entertainment media. So Medved's in there, and Roger Ebert, Gene Shalit, Richard Corliss, and whoever else may have written one.
So I evaluate the film's press on IMDB through the audience appraisals and the "adults' opinion" reflected in the Metascore -- with the proviso that these are Hollywood "adults".
Not many were there, Daytona race could have made the difference here.
Well anyway, did need a Kleenex at the end. Great movie.
When anyone thinks aobut social engineering the SEALs, they had better consider that if they have that kind of juice and end up in a bind, they only want the very very best to pull their fat out of the fire. Anything less, they will have played diversity games with their own lives.
As it stands, those who earn the Trident, earn it, and it should stay that way.
These Seals are representative of an entire military made of of volunteers; people who are ready to do violence so that we Americans can sleep securely in our beds at night.
How many of you are aware that your present administration has plans to reduce healthcare benefits and increase premiums for coverage of the dependents of these heros?
How many of you are aware that lifetime retirement benefits are awarded to a US senator after one term, and to a US congressman after two?
How many of you are aware that these same public servants have created laws that state, if you, as a business owner, are involved in interstate commerce and have a retirement program for your employees; you must vest them in that retirement program after five years of service?
How many of you are aware that members of our military who seperate, or are seperated by a reduction in force before reaching 20 years of service, are not vested in retirement benefits? They get nothing.
How many of you are aware that both parties are aware of and condone this practice?
See the movie, “Act of Valor” and consider if something doesn’t need to be done about this situation?
You know I have to register dissent on this film.
I saw the trailers; the scenes and action are superbly well done. It is worth the money I am sure.
But I don’t think this is a good idea. Oh I do believe we need more patriotic films, especially a John Wayne actor who we feel we know and trust. No it’s not the patriotic theme of the movie that I frown on, it’s not the fact that the movie makes us feel good to be Americans; nothing like these reasons are why I think it’s a bad idea.
What makes this film a bad idea is that it reveals real special force personnel and real methods. It’s too revealing.
Because the actors are real Navy Seals and the action is based on actual events that happened, this movie can be studied by an enemy to look for weaknesses. I don’t like the film because it allows an enemy to learn.
When Hollywood makes a film about our brave men and women in uniform, at least in the days of John Wayne, one could leave it up in the air if the action was based in reality or fantasy; Hollywood’s magic making could leave an enemy wondering if the action was real or not.
I sincerely hope the large box office returns of ‘Act of Valor’ will encourage them to do more patriotic films, find real actor hero characters like John Wayne so that we can escape into a quasi-fantasy or think it is maybe reality and be made to feel proud to be an American. But I hope they use real actors next time and keep a blurred line between what methods and weapons are magic and which could be real.
/critic
OK, ladies, calm down. Wife and I just got back from seeing “Act of Valor” (for our 8th wedding anniversary outing).
My thoughts:
1) The complaints I read about the lack of “normal, flawed people” turned out to be unfair in my opinion. It just wasn’t that kind of movie. The SEALs hanging out at home or at the bar/beach with each other was about 2% of the film. The rest of it was them in their element, doing what they do for a living—and they’re quite good at it. If it was going to be more of a character study type of movie, then the complaint would hold water.
2) The acting was surprisingly good. I was expecting some cringe-worthy moments, but considering these guys are all 100% amateur actors, I thought they did great. Certainly don’t expect any Academy Award nominations, but I was never pulled out of the film by a lack of believing the performances.
3) The action scenes are well-done. The standout is the first action sequence to recover the CIA lady. Awesome stuff there. The later raid in that small village made me want to go back to Iraq to get that rush of adrenaline again—there’s nothing like it.
4) The editing in the beginning is an absolute mess. The first thirty minutes or so of expository scenes are pretty hamhandedly done. It was unnecessarily difficult to track who was who and where and why. The film could’ve used a much better editor at the computer. LUCKILY, given that the movie is generally about SEALs kicking ass and taking names, it’s mostly irrelevant. The story settles down into something more manageable later on and is much easier to follow.
5) The First Person view was WAAAAY overused. I know I’ll take some crap for this, but if this was a pre-”Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” world, it would be impressive. The filmmakers were obviously trying to get you to feel like “You are a SEAL on this mission” but I’ve already done that same thing literally 100s of times on my Xbox. It really felt like I was watching someone playing a video game that I couldn’t control, and it was just plain annoying. I didn’t think it was inappropriate, just that it should be used sparingly—and it wasn’t.
Overall, a great movie that I really enjoyed, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who’s one the fence about going to see it.
Beyond that, an awesome movie.
Happy anniversary to you and the better half there, missy. ;-)
Saw this yesterday afternoon. First movie I’ve bothered to go to the theater in 4-5 years. TELL EVERYONE TO GO SEE IT. You will not be sorry. The liberal reviews are absolutely the opposite of what you will see. The people in the theater broke out into spontaneous applause at the end. Well worth the $9.50 matinee ticket, and I felt that by buying the ticket, I was sending a message. The Seals are incredible.
I looked up Hunger Games, because if I had heard of the books I didn’t remember... on IMDB it was already a top rated movie with about 20K votes before it even came out....
Also if you look up Blue in Black and White on amazon, you’ll see a bunch of fake reviews by occupy people whining about the author/photographer who is SFPD.
And lets not even get into yelp.com’s brand of garbage...
Not saying Act of Valor is bad...just that online reviews are pretty much useless
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