Promotional Media
You probably
already have a decent idea of what you’re getting into with this one. The
“silhouetted soldiers in front of a sunrise/sunset” poster is well-worn
territory, to say the least. It’s minimalistic and dramatic, and not to mention
entirely trite and decades late to cause any kind of emotional effect. Movie posters
frequently do this, however; there are just certain designs in this field that
get used and reused ad infinitum, because the general viewing public prefers
what’s familiar. This poster does that, but even for its genre it’s entirely
indistinct. Even if the template a poster uses has been done to death, it can
still pack a lot of punch if the elements of the poster are arranged distinctively. Imagine the Platoon poster,
which features the distinctive soldier on his knees, arms outstretched to the
heavens in absolute dismay. Picture the Full
Metal Jacket poster, which displays nothing but an army helmet labeled
“Born to Kill,” adjacent to a peace sticker. It’s evocative, powerful, and alerts
you to the cruel, brutally sardonic and honest reality that awaits you in the
film. If the silhouettes for this poster did something like that—refer to a
specific event in the film, or define the characters in a way that
distinguishes them from every other movie soldier—it could have been far more
evocative. The movie does well to include the tagline “A Motion Picture
Featuring Active Duty Navy SEALs,” as it’s just about the only thing that could
spark intrigue in anyone besides ardent Call
of Duty fans. There are attempts to introduce characterization in the
gestures of the shadowed soldiers; one is touching another’s helmet, two appear
to be gripping each other’s shoulders, and the rest are either doing the
“walking forward holding a gun to look totally badass” thing, or the “standing
with a gun to look totally badass” thing. But that only makes the characters
cardboard cutouts, which, as we’ll find later on, might at least not be
considered false advertising.
So
the poster, then, can only make you imagine the tropes you’ve seen in every
other war movie. You probably picture the standard fare: good ol’ boys will
risk their lives for the country and the ideals they believe in, the opposition
will be represented as freedom-hating barbarians with no concern for human
life, and at some point someone’s going to jump on a grenade in heroic
self-sacrifice. Some of the soldiers will be put out of commission by
wounds—but only the plot-convenient and/or secondary ones—and there will be
some serious bro talk. Guess what? All those things do happen. Big shocker.
The
trailer works to the movie's advantage, though. This is a movie built for the
trailer if there ever was one. The Navy SEALs exhibit their physical prowess,
pulling off all kinds of awesome techniques, which demonstrate the movie's
authenticity. Over the action, there are enough vague one-liners and explosions
to excite even the most jaded, spineless person such as myself. It's
unfortunate that some of the dialogue made it to the cut, but even so, the
trailer is well done. The music is dramatic, and there's a big ol' dosage of
piano rock towards the end that bolsters the mood. There's nothing in the
trailer that suggests this is going to be a revolutionary movie, but it does at
least promise a movie with some decent action. The cinematography is, for the
most part, very well done. There's a moment where two gunships are firing on
one position on an adjacent landmass; it's a very dynamic composition, and
works quite well.
Reviews
Observing the
reviews of the film, it almost seems as though the decision to use real Navy
SEALs in place of actors was done in part to make it “critic-proof.” Sure
enough, every major reviewer that dismissed it—in other words, basically all of
them—found their comment fields full of angry people hurling words like
“anti-troops” or “anti-American,” or the ever popular “elitist” at the writer
in question. Apparently, being a member of the US military, or even distantly
associated with one, exempts you from all creative criticism.
Screw that. If we
can’t call a bad movie a bad movie just because a few good, courageous men took
part in it—completely ignoring the Hollywood bullshit and cynical marketing
ploys that went into it—then we as a culture need to sit in the corner of the
room and seriously think about what we’re doing. The theater I saw this movie
in was empty. That should tell you
something. There's already an overabundance of media that appeals to the
military complex we seems to have in this country, and this movie could've been
the dose of realism that brings our inflated image of ourselves down a notch.
Instead, it becomes just another bog-standard movie thrown on the pile, with
all that implies. There’s a SEAL who’s expecting to raise a child with his wife
upon completion of service, so at that point you figure he might as well pick
out which flowers he’d like thrown on his grave. There’s one who carries an
American flag with him at all times, one that’s been passed down generations in
his family. Every element of it was trite and cliché, and the arguments will
come back “That’s because it’s reality, and in reality this stuff happens!” If
that’s your argument, then give me one good reason why this movie shouldn’t
have just been a documentary. If this were
real life, the shallow symbolism would actually feel real, the clichéd
backstories would achieve new levels of depth and tragedy, and you might
actually feel something when one of the SEALs got shot or killed—dramatic
reenactments can have much more potency in this kind of situation. It does a
great disservice to the SEALs to see their courageous and selfless actions
reduced to a cookie-cutter Hollywood product. If you want to freshen a cliché,
apply it to a compelling character. Outside of their assigned character traits
and backgrounds, which take all the easy roads to relatability they can—families,
“good ol’ boy” chats, patriotic speeches, “witty” banter—these characters are cardboard cutouts, arbitrarily given
traits to elicit sympathy from the audience, without actually making any effort
to do so.
Realism
There's also the
unfortunate issue that arises from having a set cast in a movie aiming to be
"realistic;" the SEALs are up against a terrorist force numbering at
least in the dozens. For the movie to maintain the same cast alive up until the
end demands that the SEALs always be at the top of their game, and for the
enemies to be inebriated graduates of the Stormtrooper Academy of Marksmanship.
Richard Corliss notes in his review for Time,
"The villains here are as interested in torturing women and killing
schoolchildren as they are in making dirty billions or bringing down the Great
Beast Satan (US). They also can’t shoot straight, whereas the SEALs’ aim is
unerring; no collateral damage when they blast away." There's a heavy
amount of realism you sacrifice in the art of film, for which the audience
compensates with suspension of disbelief. This is an issue that's haunted
film since the art itself was born; how realistic can you really get if you're
working from a sheet? I think that's where this movie largely stumbles. Putting
reality through the filter of studios and screenplays and marketing lands your
product in the "uncanny valley" or realism. It may look real, but
some of the subtleties are missing. This manifests itself in the almost
cartoonish villains; there is an attempt to establish the hook-nosed Jewish
antagonist--a stereotype I hadn't seen in a while--as a human being with a
family and a lot to lose for his lecherous behavior, but it falls somewhat
flat. One sequence in particular pits this villain against another in a heated
discussion that quickly escalates into a heavily-accented series of shouts that
gets positively comical. That's another aspect which one of the rare positive
reviews of the movie points out; Matt Turner of The ViewLondon points out, "Like 24 (almost certainly an
inspiration for the project), the film benefits from a terrorist plot that,
while hopefully preposterous at least ensures that the stakes are suitably
high."
Something else
that really cuts into the believability and immersion—and it becomes really jarring as the movie goes on—is its clear intention to be Call of Duty: The Movie. It’s absurd to
say that, though. Call of Duty is a
war simulation aiming to be realistic, and this movie is a war story that aims
to be realistic. What we end up with, then, is a simulation of a simulation.
Strange, considering it stars actual
freaking Navy SEALs. But the editing, the overall pacing of the story which
includes all manner of layered objectives, and some of the visual cues are
highly evocative of this aesthetic. Let’s run through all the video game things
that occur: firstly, when a character is introduced in the beginning of the movie,
it’s not enough to have the narration detailing the character’s most standout
traits; a freaking hologram shows up on screen. It’s got a character portrait,
and a rundown of their achievements. Secondly, large sections of the movie are
filmed from a first-person perspective. You actually see the guy holding the
gun and shooting stuff, and it was like watching someone play Modern Warfare on a giant TV. Third, there’s a climactic scene near
the end of the movie where a wounded marine, on the verge of death, takes out
the Big Bad with a few last pistol shots, in a scene lifted wholesale, again,
from the Call of Duty series. The
screen is red and blurry—as though the first thing that happens when you’re
dying is to lose your contacts and get strawberry jam thrown in your face—and
all the sounds become a distant echo.
The point is, this
is a film that tries so hard to emulate other things when it doesn't have to.
It had every opportunity to portray a gruesome reality, or at least a reality
beyond trope and cliché; the fact that it failed is largely just an
amalgamation of several bad ideas, badly executed.
Works Cited
Corliss, Richard. "Act of Valor Movie Review: Trained SEALs." TIME. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2012. <http://entertainment.time.com/2012/02/25/act-of-valor-trained-seals/>.
Turner, Matthew. "Act of Valour Film Review." The View London. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2012. <http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/films/act-of-valour-film-review-45517.html>.
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