Movie Review: Act of Valor

Act of Valor provides an interesting concept for a film. It centers around a group of Navy SEALS played by real life Navy SEALS attempting to thwart the plans of terrorist planning to strike the US on it's own soil.  Act of Valor is a film that I can appreciate the concept of and the amount of work that these real-life heroes put into it, but it's far from flawless. The acting and story are pretty flat. It wasn't so much the acting from the SEALS (clearly they're in the military and not professional actors), but the professional actors are completely awful. The two villains in particular provide two of the most laughable, overacted performances I've seen in years. The story was also incompetent as hell. The plot doesn't really go anywhere and seems like it was thrown together in a few hours on separate days by many different people who didn't communicate with each other. Thankfully, the real star of the movie is the action, and that is where Act of Valor delivers. The action scenes are great. They are loaded with real-life military tactics and a lot of first-person shots to make it that much more realistic. The action scenes are long and done on a grand scale which provides the film with its saving grace. This film is completely saved by the intensity and realism of the action. I pin-pointed Act of Valor months ago after seeing the trailer when I said the action would be great and everything else would be horrible. The action is good enough to make this a decent watch, but this could have been a much better film if they had hired good actors to play the non-SEAL parts and a screenwriter to write a serviceable story.

3/5 Stars