Review of ACT OF VALOR

ACT OF VALOR

The film opens with a quote about a frustration of getting old-- people no longer consider you dangerous. A little later, a man careens an ice-cream truck through streets filled with bicycles and pulls into the grounds of a school in the Philippine Islands. Children crowd around and the man amuses them with mock ferocity. One little boy persuades his father to buy him ice cream. The father, who has an American flag pin on his lapel and is presumably the US Ambassador, agrees. While a young woman gives out the ice cream, the driver walks quickly away, and the truck explodes, killing the woman, the ambassador and a number of children.

The driver is a Chechen jihadist, ABU SHABAL, who works with a multi-lingual mercenary, CHRISTO.  LISA MORALES, a CIA operative is meeting with her partner, WALTER ROSS, to share information they've gathered about Christo when Christo's terrorists break in, kill Ross, and kidnap Lisa. They take her to a jungle hideout and slap her around to get her to talk. Then one of the terrorists drills a hole through her hand, apparently for the hell of it.

Nice guys.

Enter SEAL TEAMS.  We meet each of them individually: ROURKE is an expectant father, DAVE has several children and his wife always changes the diapers.  Similar snippets are offered of the others.  They airlift to the jungle hideout, kill a lot of terrorists and rescue poor Lisa, though they have a harrowing escape (involving a gunboat airlifted by a helicopter) and one of them is wounded. Hurray! Mission successful.

Next, Christo and Shabal plan to infiltrate two teams of suicidal murderers with especially lethal vests into American cities for a strike that will make the September 9 attack look like 'a walk in the park'.  The Seals take out one of the teams with relative ease, but the second...

You get the idea.  It's just one damned mission after another until the world is saved, or at least a major terrorist attack is averted.  The Seals are crack shots who almost always get their man, while the terrorists usually couldn't hit a barn door.  The Seals are all warm, friendly guys with comradery and courage, while the terrorists are all psychopaths. Granted, Christo funds charities, but it's just a front.  He's still slime. In shows like Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire, the villains are human with good as well as bad qualities. The good may not balance the bad, but it makes for a more enjoyable story.  This movie is just plain preachy.

Also, by painting the enemies as such demons, it justifies and glorifies war.

This film and a lot of bad reviews and made a lot of money at the box office, probably because of the combat scenes.  And those are, indeed riveting.  You know damn well the Seals will escape their pursuers, but you still tense up and root for them to succeed.

As a cinematic production, this movie is a POS (piece of shit). As a workout film, I give it ++++.  After a slow beginning, it will often get your pulse up to a run.