Hell, All Commando Baracko has to do is star in one more blockbuster like this and he can retire the national debt all by himself...
Posted on 10/14/2011 6:09:29 PM PDT by Hojczyk
Via Jonathan Last, this is as close as most of America will ever get to watching real SEALs in action. How do I know? Because the troops here are all played by … active-duty Navy SEALs. Really.
It started out as a training video and things just sort of ballooned:
Act of Valor has an unusual backstory. The film, directed by Mike “Mouse” McCoy and Scott Waugh, started out as a training video for Navy SEALS. The Navy liked what they saw so much that they decided to turn it into a documentary.
Then, they decided to make a feature, and hired screenwriter Kurt Johnstad (300) to create a fictional story about a squad that goes on a covert mission to recover a kidnapped CIA agent.
Another interesting aspect of the upcoming feature, which will hit theaters on February 17, is that the SEALS are played by actual SEALS. The bad guys, however, are played by actors, including Emilio Rivera and Roselyn Sanchez.
This sort of thing has worked before. And thanks to the SEALs’ new place in the national consciousness post-Bin Laden, there are bound to be curiosity-seekers swinging by the theater who might not have bitten on this last year. Exit question: How much at the box office? Over/under is $50 million.
Update: Commenters are wondering whether the Navy put up the money — i.e. our money — to bankroll this. Good question. Maybe that’s the way we’ll finally eliminate the deficit. All Obama needs to do is finance ten or twenty thousand superhero blockbusters and we’re out of the fiscal hole.
I think “Patton” was probably the best war movie I have ever seen. I had read a couple of books about him and the movie was surprisingly reliable.
It was also good entertainment.
The first time I saw “Tora Tora Tora” it was really disappointing. Seeing it a couple of more times it got better. Same for “Midway”.
A real disappointment was “MacArthur”.
It’s been years since I’ve gone to the movies but we went to see Courageous last week. They had the trailer for Act of Valor. I’m going to make a point to see this.
Not a bad movie...but “Patton” is still the best in my opinion
I give “Black Hawk Down” a big thumbs up for being a great war movie. “Saving Private Ryan” was good as well. The series “Band of Brothers” was fantastic.
Kelly’s Heros. Going at the krauts old school.
Band of Brothers
To me, the best war movie ever made.
Another good one was “Sgt. York”. Absolutely loved Walter Brennan as Pastor Pyle.
No one else could have jumped and danced around singing “Give me that old time Religion” without looking weird. Brennan simply made me want to do the same thing.
Except for the voice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXzT_j8NZsg&feature=related
Well the tanks were wrong too but it would have probably been impossible to find dozens of Shermans and Panthers to make a movie.
Patton was no doubt an outstanding movie. One that makes you proud to be an American.
However, on the subject of war, I prefer to watch it through the perspective of the subordinates rather than the officers. I don’t like tidy movies where everything makes sense either.
For those reasons, I give the nod to Das Boot as the greatest war movie ever made.
Hell, All Commando Baracko has to do is star in one more blockbuster like this and he can retire the national debt all by himself...
Das Boot was really depressing to me. Of course being on one of those U-boats especially late in the war would have been awfully tough. Their losses were extreme.
I personally think the soldiers who most unappreciated are the combat engineers. They were the first to land at Normandy and suffered 80 percent casualties. They had to clear obstructions to the landing craft. We would never landed without them.
In the Battle of the Bulge, the combat engineers were the last ditch forces left to defend then destroy bridges.
The leader of the tanks which were to break through to Antwerp said “ those damned engineers stopped us by blowing bridges and fuel dumps just as we got to them.
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
The original.
Groan. Tanks have to be the worst part of WWII movies. Operational Shermans and T-34's were still to be found in the 1970's although they were seldom used. Only recently have enough Panthers, Tigers and Jagdpanzers been pulled from Eastern European bogs, lake bottoms and river bottoms and restored to operational condition that realistic WWII movies are possible..
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