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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

Act Of Valor

ACT OF VALOR (Mike McCoy, Scott Waugh). 110 minutes. Some subtitles. For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: N


Act Of Valor stars “actual Navy SEALs” in an action-movie storyline that, we’re told at the beginning of the film, is based on actual “acts of valour”. The filmmakers would very much like us to believe that it’s the closest thing to a documentary you can see in a theatre. But that’s just a marketing tool, like the movie itself – it’s part of a bigger sell.

Act Of Valor is really a generic B movie about a team of SEALs racing around the globe to stop an evil terrorist plot to smuggle suicide bombers armed with undetectable explosive vests into America. It’s basically a 1993 Tom Clancy TV movie, except Clancy usually makes you care about what happens to his characters.

That’s because directors Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh – working with what appears to be the total cooperation of the U.S. military – have done their best to make a navy recruitment video in the style of a backlit, hyper-stylized Michael Bay actioner. In pursuit of realism, they’ve cast their production with indistinguishable guys who look great swinging heavy ordnance around but cannot deliver a single line of dialogue convincingly.

You’d be surprised how much that matters I found myself grudgingly admitting that even the dullest action-movie actor is still, you know, an actor. (It doesn’t help that several other roles are cast with veteran performers who can sell the cheesy situations without wincing it just makes the non-professionals look even worse.)

It’s slick, superficial and entirely forgettable, and dramatically it’s just embarrassing. Even the gung-ho crowd at my preview screening couldn’t keep from snickering at a particularly overwrought moment – and if they didn’t buy it, I can’t imagine how this would play with a general audience.

normw@nowtoronto.com

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