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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.