Review of Act of Valor (2012) by Jason P — 28 Nov 2012

After finally watching this movie, I must say...excellent. I didn't know the story behind it going in, just the Netflix synopsis of the plot. Being former Navy, and former Army I quickly picked up on the fact that this sounded less like a movie and more like someone followed an operation with a camera. After watching it, I looked it up on the Wikipedia and found that, indeed, the main cast were all active duty operators.

And I was also surprised to see that the film got so many negative reviews from the critics, but a lot of positive from the watching public. The public are generally more forgiving than critics, but not normally by a margin of 50%. I've come to the conclusion that, in this peculiar case of a movie, film critics are uniquely unqualified to rate it. This is because the movie is purposely not "Hollywood" and film critics rate things based on the Hollywood style, where drama and character development are the most important things...things that were purposely lacking in this film.

If a critic were to approach this film from a more objective standpoint asking two simple questions: "Is it entertaining?" and "Does it give the viewer a sneak peek into the world of special operations?", then the answers to both questions would be a definite "yes".

So if that is what you want to see, then this is the movie for you. If you are more interested in fake emotions, fake situations, and fake people, Hollywood has tons of movies for you to choose from, well vetted by critics whether or not they are actually entertaining.