*Originally written February 4th, 2016*
Wow, that was bad, like really bad. This was the first time I'd seen this since release, and it was just as terrible and laughably bad as I remember. A deeply cynical and overbearing display of "Oorah" patriotism that makes war seem like a cool video game than a real series of horrific events. It's truly disturbing piece of film-making.
It's possibly the closest we'll get to a Call of Duty movie right now, and that's not a compliment. Act of Valor is a joke of a film, I'm sure the Navy Seals are brave and dedicated people, but my god, they could not act their way through a school play. What a misguided choice it was to cast real Seals as the leads. Every line was horribly stilted and I couldn't just help but laugh a lot.
The script doesn't help either. Filled with terrible and cliche lines, there is truly awful and cringe worthy narration too, like I was rolling my eyes every time that guy spoke. There is a ton of cheese too. This is probably the first time I've seen a film where someone shouts "grenade!" and jumps on it in slow motion without it played for laughs. The irony is unbelievable. Also, a Seal with a pregnant wife at home? Did these fucking writers even try? That guy was dead the minute the line revealing that was written. Pathetic.
While there are some genuinely decent action beats, although the overuse of first person camera shots got on my nerves. It felt like watching someone else playing Call of Duty, Battlefield or whatever the fuck. That's fine in small doses, but it is so overplayed here. The action is played as "bad-ass" and "cool" too, it feels like a glorified advert for the marines, rather than showing the true horrors of war. Sure a few of the Seals die, but there's no real weight to any of this at all. Every bad guy is a faceless cardboard cutout just waiting to get gunned down in a blaze of glorified American patriotism.
Act of Valor is complete and utter garbage on nearly front, poorly acted, terribly written and laughably bad. A stupid film for the ADD Call of Duty generation.
3/10 Dans
Act of Valor is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
Follow us:
Twitter: @FigmentReviews
Instagram: @thesurprisingadventuresofdanb
YouTube: Figment Reviews
Letterboxd: Dan
No comments:
Post a Comment