Movie review: 'Act of Valor' puts Navy SEALs in bottom drawer action drama

What’s the point of putting real soldiers in a movie? Certainly, the producers reasoned, the HBO blockbuster mini-series “Generation Kill” had Rudy Reyes, a real albeit inactive Reconnaissance Marine playing himself to great praise.

I imagine this since I’d like to get into the mindset of the people who put out this potentially explosive action movie that becomes a bewildering catastrophe thanks to the truly horrid acting. While other directors and movie producers funnel millions into their actors’ realism camps and immersion sessions, the people who did “Act of Valor” went the other way. Caught somewhere between a B-movie and a videogame, I can see where they wanted this to go but clearly, none of these active duty guys Navy SEALs or US Navy Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen come close to Sgt Reyes’s Baghdad-destroying, fruity combat boots. The plot is wire-thin, though it does show promise. We open in Pampanga, on the grounds of the Holy Angel School near Angeles City (but is now billed as international school), where a terrorist uses the distraction of an ice cream truck to kill the American ambassador, his son, and dozens of children. Yes, the explosive was planted inside the truck, just to show you how evil these bastards are. US intelligence bills a Chechen terrorist named Abu Shabal as the mastermind.   Intercut with scenes in California, where members of SEAL Team Seven’s Bandito Platoon are relaxing at the beach, two CIA operatives in Costa Rica are having the worst day of their lives. Agents Ross (Nestor Serrano) and Morales (Roselyn Sánchez) are just about to consolidate their intelligence work on Christo Troykovich, a Russian drug smuggler with links to Abu Shabal, when unknown men assault their hotel. Ross is killed while Morales is captured, tortured but kept alive. Bandito Platoon is quickly dispatched for her rescue. The story thickens when it’s revealed that Shabal and Troykovich were old buddies in Russia and are now working together to smuggle a new type of bomb vest. An instrument of terror that uses plastic explosives and ceramic ball bearings that works like a claymore mine. Best of all? This new vest can evade metal detectors. Yeah, that’s as interesting as it gets. Of course the real star here is the SEAL tactics action. What the soldiers lack in acting skill they more than make up for in authenticity. Everything from how confident they are in squad movements (and in some scenes deathly quiet), operating the tech of miniature drone planes and military grade gadgets, and the decisive swiftness of their kills all scream genuine article. There’s a sequence where the SEALs are being chased by a truckload of guerrillas in the Costa Rican jungle and they crash their already bullet-shredded vehicle straight into the river without hesitation (with an unconscious CIA agent in the back that needs to be extracted). Just as they hit the water and it looks like the jungle goons have them in their sights, the two Navy SOC-R gunboats that have been rushing down the waters all this time arrive exactly as planned and decimate the opposition. One truck explodes. The rest of the goons, fearing such firepower, scatter and take cover. Bandito Platoon is extracted post-haste like another day at the office. The visual result is splendid to watch in its swagger and brag. It’s hard to fake that.   The finale, a battle in Mexico against cartel militia and a handful of Chechen extremists trying to flee through the underground tunnels into the US, turns the whole issue of numbers versus skill into visual spectacle. See, the cartel militia can’t shoot worth a damn but there are dozens of them, and they rely on sneaky tactics and a rain of grenades against the SEALs. While the Navy guys are each worth 10 cartel gunmen there’s only a squad of them even if they do have the latest weapons and their specialty training costs millions. But how bad is it? Pretty bad. Bottom drawer bad. The graphics for the maps pinpointing the location of the soldiers, the introduction of the SEALs, how the cinematography switches from filmic to a behind the gun view, all smack of a first-person videogame shooter. This movie might just be an extended filmic interlude that wouldn’t be out of place in any of the major shooter franchises like “Medal of Honor,” “Battlefield,” or “Call of Duty.” It works for that “like you’re really there” effect though, but that’s exactly why the videogames do it. All the authentic action in the world can’t save a stock story with clever graphics from the hell of single facial expressions or teary-eyed partings with spouses you may never see again. That’s as good as the “acting” gets here. Vacillates between average to ghastly at the drop of a hat and the scenes where the Navy seals are with their family, chilling out or saying goodbye will motivate you to claw your eyes out. And reading from the writings of Tecumseh doesn’t help either.   Roselyn Sánchez and Nestor Serrano are the only recognizable actors who’ve starred in Hollywood flicks here, but Serrano’s dead within 10 minutes of his cameo and Sanchez is reduced to begging in Spanish for her captors to stop torturing her or unconscious with the drilled stigmata for the rest of her roles in the movie. A pity that the lack of thespian caliber distracts so much from the first class action. Add to that how the Mexicans speak Tagalog (what, they couldn’t find Spanish speakers?), the Chechen Muslim rebel has a mellifluous accent that sounds more French than Carpathian, and the Russian smuggler speaks with a Brooklyn-accented English—granted, his globe-trotting legal enterprises may have educated him in good American slang, but still, I can’t get behind the plausibility of it. Hardcore military fans and action junkies may wish to put this one on their shelf for reference, but there’s little to recommend this to the general public otherwise. –KG, GMA News "Act of Valor" opened on July 11, 2012. All photos courtesy of Campaigns and Grey