Act of Valor (2012)

God bless America, gun porn, plenty of stars n stripes, heroic sacrifices and a military funeral with full honours...its all very serious here I tell ya.




I have read this is kinda like a remake of the classic action fest 'Navy Seals', it does feel a bit like the Sheen/Biehn/Paxton vehicle accept for one thing, this film is highly realistic and minus the over the top characters...of course. In fact this film (like a few others) is so accurate you would think the SEALS are kinda giving their game away by allowing films like this to be made, you don't see action films showcasing the inner workings of how the SAS manoeuvre and take down targets, I'm not sure it would be allowed.

I have also read that this is pretty much just a recruitment drive for the US military/Navy, to get young men excited and wanna join up. Whether this may or may not make young men want to join I dunno, 'Top Gun' certainly helped I recall, one thing I do know, this is a rip roaring military action film which is damn hot and makes you wanna play CoD.

OK so you wanna see a film adaptation of Call of Duty or Battlefield then this is your film, the whole story plays out like a CoD mission from start to finish with plenty of dubious greasy foreigners as the baddies. Its not hard to follow as the film moves from one action set piece to another interspersed with simple plot explanations from various military officers. The action is first rate and gets your pulse racing as the camera gives you a first person perspective from one of the SEAL team much like your well known FPS's, combine this with some excellent sequences mixing sniping, HALO jumping, extractions, room sweeping and plenty of bloody terrorist take downs.




The film is set up well with a nasty terrorist act which you can obviously see coming but it does wrench your heart out, from that point on you wanna see some kick ass revenge. The first target, to extract a female hostage, is slick savage and amazing to watch with a long fast fluid sequence to rival any top action film around. I can't see how this can disappoint anyone who wants action. To be honest after that the film does lull somewhat, its hard to follow on from the excellent jungle shoot out at the start but the ending sequence in Mexico again is bang on form and shouldn't disappoint.

In short this film is all American as you would expect, its very bland and not hard to follow, its pretty much a whole video game mission and the acting is really quite bad, no idea who the cast are but they are all wooden as hell. On the other hand if you wanna see some kick ass realistic SEAL team action gunning down lots of slimy terrorists and drug dealers with multiple close ups on various big kick ass guns...then this could be for you.

7/10