Review of Act of Valor (2012) by Politeia — 27 Jul 2012

First off, I'd like to state that this is not a propaganda piece. What it is, however, is a cynical ploy by the studio to cash-in on a highly polarized yet energized conservative movement and a large number of returning veterans now that the wars overseas are being brought to a close.

It is also a ploy by the DoD to boost recruitment for the military, but it is not a propaganda piece. For it to be propaganda the film would have to say something, anything, with more depth than "Jihadis bad; criminal networks who support Jihadis bad".

That's something that everyone barring a few radicals on both ends of the political spectrum can agree on. It's like saying "rape bad," everyone agrees already you don't need to release a film to convince us.

Hence, I don't feel the film was attempting to convince us of anything other than, maybe, join the military? There's nothing to really be said about the film; in about an hour and a half (feels like four) blank-slates will go around shooting dark-skinned people in exotic locales until they go someplace else to shoot dark-skinned people in exotic locales.

No, I'm not attempting to push some claim of racism or anything as daft as neocolonialism on the part of the movie. Just think about that premise for a moment -- it's every first-person shooter released between Call of Duty 4 and now.

Let's talk about those blank-slates; my primary criticism of nearly every war film I've watched is that each character is essentially the same as the character before him. When you create a character and give him one defining characteristic, he or she is that characteristic.

When you're making a film and you give a group of people that same characteristic they're that single characteristic. At the end of the film I had to ask my father who died.