Trikki

http://actofvalor.com/

20 Military members on my Base were granted tickets to see a screening of this film, set to be released in Early February. The rest of the theatre was packed with Special Operations members from Southern Command. To say that the movie theatre was packed with a whole lot of whoopass, would be an understatement.

The characters in the film are portrayed by 'actual' active duty US Navy Seals, not actors. (The most incredible human beings on the planet) The story is fiction, but the special effects, the tactics and the weapons are 100% real.

The acting portion of the film, in the start mostly, was a bit weak. To be expected when you realize that these are real life Navy Seals. The character development was also a little rushed. With that said.. This was the best military movie I have ever seen. It doesn't even come close. Absolutely fantastic, I was also surprised to find myself in tears towards the end of the movie. I highly recommend this movie when it comes out. Because of how this movie was made, it's like nothing else I have seen.

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Malse

This film brought to you by the Ministry of Information?

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I saw innumerable hosts, foredoomed to darkness, dirt, pestilence, obscenity, misery and early death.
Dickens, ‘A December Vision’, 1850

Ibudin

Your typical special forces movie, I liked GI Jane better...

Doubt this will surpass Saving Private Ryan or anything on that level.

Trikki

I explained from the get go Ibudin, it's better because it's real. The Actors in this movie are REAL Navy Seal service members. The explosions, tactics, the weaponry, is all REAL shit and tactics used by the navy Seals. This movie isn't just a go to the theater movie, it's a military experience. It was fucking awesome.

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Ibudin

Real explosions by real people, I can't wait to see this. Thanks Trikki.

Elemak the Enchanter

I think what she's getting at is this: When you're military and you go watch a movie you have to unplug your brain a bit because you will otherwise spend the next 1-2 hours nitpicking everything that is wrong with the movie and how they portray it on the big screen because even with military advisors, it gets so "hollywooded" up that it's unbelievable.

But since the guys in the movie were running the show on a lot of it, it's more true to life, and therefore less brain-unplugging is necessary for us.

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Kelraz Bladesinger

Saw this on Wednesday. Pretty underwhelming waste of taxpayer money. You've already paid for it once, don't make the mistake of paying again by going to see this in theaters.

Trikki

What don't you like about this movie? The acting? The special effects? Combat?

Actors = Active Duty Navy Seals
Special Effects = 100% real.
Combat = 100% real combat techniques.

This might appeal to the military community more than the civilians..

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Quit Bitching Start a Revolution.

Kelraz Bladesinger

I saw it at the Pentagon in a special screening, and there certainly were some military folks there who went ape shit over it. Obviously its going to appeal more to military people because that's the whole gimmick they are selling you. But, a lot of the people who did see it (enlisted service persons, mind you) were quite disappointed because it was only the gimmick and very little substance.

For one, there is a reason people pay professional actors for movies. The acting was horrible. This was probably the main reason that most critics who saw this movie gave it a pretty horrible score (19% top critics on rotten tomatoes, 42/100 on metacritic). All of the lines were given fairly flat and it really pulled you out of the movie with how unrealistic it all sounded. I'm sure they all are amazing service members and that they are amazing at what they do, they just aren't amazing service members and amazing actors.

As for your special effects claim, that is entirely false. They used live rounds in scant few of the scenes. I promise you, the squibs exploding on the terrorist's chests weren't actual bullets being shot through actual terrorists. Danny Cangemi, the special effects coordinator, also coordinated the special effects for Star Trek and Transformers and Spider Man (and no, in those movies there weren't real spaceships firing real photon cannons). There was CGI in places, an army of stunt personnel, and plenty of visual effects. The reality is, real explosions look stupidly small on film. There is both a level of expectation and even an issue with film latitude not being able to show you all of the colors you would see in reality. You can't do a movie like this without special effects, and its silly to assume they did.

The last issue I had was with the story. I don't want to give it away because I'm sure a lot of you will like to see it, but not only was it extremely cliche but the whole film just really lacked a soul and felt flat. I don't know if that was the Pentagon's meddling and bureaucracy that killed it off along the way, or if el Bandito just didn't have the experience to pull this off. We'll see if they do better with the Governator next year.

I wanted to like it because our service members have taken some flack over the past few years due to the poor decisions of our leaders, and seeing it in a room full of wounded service members and their families (and getting paid to do it) was going to be a pretty great day at the office. However, someone really screwed the pooch along the way.

Malse

The story likely felt flat because it was ghost-written by one of Tom Clancy's pool of hacks that have been churning out military porn under his name for the last ten years.

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I saw innumerable hosts, foredoomed to darkness, dirt, pestilence, obscenity, misery and early death.
Dickens, ‘A December Vision’, 1850