Movie of the Week: Act of Valor

   

 

    Movie of the Week (9/8/13-9/14/13): You can thank the kickoff of the NFL season for me being late this week, I think it's a good excuse! But, just because I'm late again doesn't mean we have no certain movie to watch this week and judge for ourselves. I had a hard time picking out one this week so I decided to go with one that had some high expectations but in the end bombed. However, they had good intentions when they made this movie and that was to honor Navy Seals and other military men and women who have died since 9/11. We have had a few other films to honor them but none like this, no, this one is different because it uses real active Navy Seals, and that was where they went wrong. This is Act of Valor.  
    This film follows a group of Seals who are called upon to rescue a kidnapped CIA agent and in the process they uncover a terror plot on the United States. From there on it is filled with action sequences and some drama with the bad guys and families of the Seals. But that's about it! Let's face it, the plot to this film was very thin and was really nothing we haven't seen before. Good guys figure something out, bad guy tries to get away with it, good guy stops them at the last second. Yeah, it was that kind of movie and, I'll just go on and say it, it wasn't very good. But, don't worry I'll go into more detail about why it just wasn't what it should have been.
    First and foremost it had absolutely terrible acting in it and we know why! It was because the film makers decided to use real active duty Seals and it was just a huge mistake. They should have used real actors, the only real actor is Roselyn Sanchez, to make the movie more believable and exciting to watch. But, don't get me wrong I understand why they decided use real active Seals, to give the film more emotion. But, it back fired completely, I mean the bad guys were the best part of the movie, and that should not happen in a movie like this. On top of the bad acting we have absolutely no character development from our leads, we never really get to know them, just a couple short scenes with their families at the beginning and end. Nothing to make us care about the characters like we should and we can blame the writers for that.
    We can also blame something else on the writers and that is the cliches. The writers must have sat down and watched every single war movie ever made and decided to put every single cliche known to man in this one movie. Now, I can't go into details about them because some contain spoilers but I have never seen a movie so filled with cliches. There were points during the movie where I rolled my eyes because another cliche popped up. The writers either struggled to add in their own ideas or they just didn't care and thought that is what the people wanted, the same old thing! Well they were wrong!
    The only good aspect about this film is the tactics that are used by the Seals and the action sequences. We get very good fight scenes and shootouts that provide a lot of explosions and chases, which, I am sad to say, are the best parts of the film. I say that because war movies need drama and we didn't get that from this film. Another good thing were the tactics that were used by the Seals, those were interesting to watch, but it just wasn't enough to make this movie a good war film with a good mix of drama and action. This is a dissapointment because it was suppose to be a tribute to the fallen in our special forces but it was let down by ways of terrible writting, terrible acting, too many cliches, no character development, and a sub-par plot. You are better off watching Black Hawk Down!                                                                     
1.5/4 Stars.