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.
“You mean “Southern Sedition’’, don’t you?”
You took the words right out of King George’s mouth.
He had no more use for slave owning rebels like George Washington than you do.
“The Patriot” was a pretty good war movie.
Well if it isn’t my favorite Confederate on the compost heap! Thing is though George Washington set his free, didn’t he.
“The Brest Fortress”
“We Were Soldiers” was very good
. . . This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here. . .
Henry V
Shakespeare
Compared to "Pearl Harbor", it's a masterpiece.
What those guys do for real goes beyond any fiction story.
“Thing is though George Washington set his free, didn’t he.”
It’s nice to see you try to make the old boy fit into the neo-Yankee mold. A couple of Washington slaves were indeed emancipated after a fashion. Both Ona, Martha’s maid, and Hercules the cook ran away when the Washingtons lived in Pennsylvania.
The Washingtons had taken 9 slaves with them to Philadelphia. At the time Pennsylvania was abolishing slavery and slaves kept in the state more than 6 months would be declared free. So George had them rotated back to Virginia inside of 6 months to prevent that from happening.
At the time of his death the Washingtons owned more than 270 slaves. Martha emancipated the 120 that had belonged to George about a year after his death. Upon her death the remaining 150 were inherited by her children.
“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.”
As long as you ignore George C Scott’s deep gravelly voice.
My dad was a young 2nd Lt in the 7th Army and got to hear Patton speak. Patton’s voice was higher pitched with a touch of Virginia Tidewater accent.
You can hear him speak here, along with a narrator you might recognize:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=uYjnWXFTQkM
Then you'd really enjoy "Inglourious Basterds."
"You probably heard we ain't in the prisoner-takin' business; we in the killin' Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin'"
No I did not. The War of Northern Aggession had little to do with slavery at the outset. Lincoln himself said he would wage the war whether the slaves were freed or not. He didn’t resort to the Emancipation Proclamation (Which only applied to states in secession, by the way) until after the war began to go badly for the north and the population began to agitate for it to end. Study American history objectively for a change-!!
Hey! You’re preaching to the choir.
My post was intended to bring light to the benighted jmacusa to help free him from the shackles of the cult of Lincoln and its associated war criminals.
I pinged you because jmac’s original post was addressed to you.
Glory is hands down the best Civil War movie, although I still like Gone with the Wind.
Gettysburg was fantastic
We Were Soldiers. Braveheart.
Thanks for posting this.
I was just about to say the same thing myself.
MacArthur had the feel of a cheap made for TV movie. Add to that MacArthur was a over-rated general and it was a turn off for me.
I like ‘Cross Of Iron”. A good flick shown from the German point of view.
Ping to keep an eye out for this.
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