Act of Valor

Act of Valor
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Mike McCoy Scott Waugh
Produced by	Mike McCoy Scott Waugh
Written by	Kurt Johnstad
Starring	Roselyn Sánchez Nestor Serrano Emilio Rivera U.S. Navy SEALs U.S. Navy Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen
Music by	Nathan Furst
Cinematography	Shane Hurlbut
Editing by	Siobhan Prior Michael Tronick Scott Waugh
Studio	Bandito Brothers
Distributed by	Relativity Media
Release date(s)	February 24, 2012 (2012-02-24)
Running time	101 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$12 million
Box office	$78,197,290[1]

Act of Valor is a 2012 American action film^[2] directed by Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh, and written by Kurt Johnstad. It stars Alex Veadov, Roselyn Sánchez, Nestor Serrano, Emilio Rivera, and actual active duty U.S. Navy SEALs and U.S. Navy Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen. The film was released on February 24, 2012. It will be released on DVD on June 5, 2012.

Plot

The movie opens with a narrative written by Chief Petty Officer Dave to the son of a friend, discussing heroism, bravery, and a code of honor, as footage of a High-Altitude, Low-Opening (HALO) airborne jump plays.

In the Philippines, a terrorist kills the American ambassador, his son, and dozens of children, using a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device at a private school. The mastermind, a Chechen terrorist named Abu Shabal, escapes and returns to Russia.

In Costa Rica, two CIA agents, Walter Ross (Nestor Serrano) and Morales (Roselyn Sánchez) meet to consolidate intelligence about their target, a drug smuggler named Mikhail "Christo" Troykovich. Christo's men kill Ross and capture Morales, bringing her to a riverside compound. Christo orders her to be tortured but kept alive until she tells the smugglers what she knows.

At Coronado, California, the members of Bandito Platoon, SEAL Team Seven are at home. Lieutenant Rorke confides to Chief Dave that his wife is pregnant. The sailors spend time with their families at the beach, then together at the Coronado docks; the next day, they deploy to the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) in the South Pacific, where they are briefed on the events in Costa Rica. The CIA believes that the agents were targeted for investigating a connection between Abu Shabal and Christo. The SEAL team is ordered to extract Morales.

The seven Navy SEALs insert into the jungle via another HALO jump and hold position outside the compound all night. At dawn, Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen are inserted down the river from the compound on-board Special Operations Craft—Riverine and deploy a drone that identifies the guards and a large group of enemies camped down the road. The SEALs approach the compound, hear Morales being tortured, and decide to enter the compound early. Rorke and Weimy, the team sniper, provide cover for the other five, led by Dave, who conduct room-clearing, engaging several enemy guards. One SEAL is shot in the eye, blinding him and knocking him unconscious. The SEALs extract Morales, escaping with her and recovering a cell phone full of the information she had gathered. However, the gunfight alerts the enemy quick reaction force down the road, who drive toward the camp. The SEALs commandeer an enemy truck and exfiltrate. The hot pursuit forces them to revert to a tertiary extraction point, where the SURC boats and SWCCs meet them and shoot up the enemy trucks and soldiers.

Christo and Shabal meet in Ukraine. Christo knows the CIA is watching him and informs Shabal that subordinates will complete their project. Shabal is enraged, but goes to the factory that Christo specified, where bomb vests are being assembled. These use plastic explosives and ceramic ball bearings to work like a claymore mine, can evade metal detectors, and are thin enough to be worn under any clothing without notice.

On the carrier, Senior Chief Petty Officer Miller, the operations officer of the SEAL team, informs Rorke that the SEAL who was shot in the head will survive, without one eye. In addition, the intelligence they recovered confirms that Shabal and Christo were working together. Shabal, an old-school Muslim terrorist, seeks to bring the jihad to the United States, while Christo is not just a drug dealer but a smuggler, with routes and contacts into the United States. Two of the SEALs are sent to Somalia, where an arms transfer involving Shabal is taking place. The remaining four, minus the SEAL who lost his eye, stay in the U.S. in case the terrorists make it in. Miller himself has been reassigned to SEAL Team Four, hunting for Christo somewhere on the oceans. Lieutenant Rorke gives a letter to Dave in case he is killed.

The two SEALs in Somalia confirm the presence of Shabal and sixteen terrorists, and identify his plane. They track the plane to an island off Baja California, where the team assaults. They successfully attack and secure the island, killing eight terrorists. Rorke is nearly killed by an RPG that strikes his vest directly in the chest but does not detonate.

Meanwhile, in the South Pacific, Christo is hiding with his family aboard their yacht, guarded by gunboats and mercenaries. SEAL Team Four identifies the yacht with satellite imaging and deploys several helicopters and gunboats. They quickly kill the guards, capture the yacht, and capture Christo and his family. Chief Miller interrogates Christo. Threatened with permanent separation from his family, Christo reveals his connection with Shabal and his plans to have his sixteen fighters detonate their vests at strategic points throughout the United States, causing a panic and doing economic damage surpassing that following the September 11 attacks. But Christo says he is powerless to stop the attack.

The SEALs are informed that not all of their targets were neutralized and that half, including Shabal, are en route to the United States, via tunnels underneath a milk factory. They are ordered to link up with Mexican Special Forces and neutralize the remaining targets. U.S. Marines relieve the SEALs and enter Mexico, meeting the Mexican Special Forces. The Mexican leader informs the SEALs that the assault will be extremely dangerous, as the smugglers are supported by the well-armed local drug cartel, and that a "Black Hawk Down"–style stalemate would have political consequences.

The SEALs and Mexican forces assault the factory, hiding in dump trucks. The combined forces cordon off the factory while Rorke, the Mexican officer, Chief Dave, and several other SEALs clear most of the factory. The Mexican officer is wounded and the SEALs are nearly killed as the explosive vest of a suicide bomber detonates. As they reach the tunnels, an enemy fighter drops an M67 fragmentation grenade into the room, "cooked" to minimize the time needed to detonate. Only Lieutenant Rorke sees the grenade land. Realizing his team cannot escape the room in time, he dives on the grenade and it detonates, mortally wounding him. Dave pursues the terrorists alone, as the remaining SEAL in the team tends to Rorke. Dave catches up to the terrorists as they try to escape through the tunnels, but shoots seven of them as they flee into the entrance. However, Shabal appears and fires nearly thirty rounds from an AK-47 into Dave, destroying his weapon in addition to wounding him critically. Dave draws his sidearm and kills the eighth suicide bomber as he runs into the tunnel. Shabal approaches Dave and prepares to execute him, but is killed by other SEALs who have arrived.

At home, Rorke is given a military funeral with full honors, while Dave survived his injuries. The SEALs pay their respects, punching the gold SEAL tridents that signify them as SEALs into Rorke's coffin. Dave finishes the letter that he was reading from at the beginning of the movie, telling Lieutenant Rorke's son of the valor of the father he will never know, and ending with a poem by Tecumseh. The film ends with a dedication to every U.S. Navy SEAL killed in action since 9/11, and a list of their names.

Cast

• U.S. Navy SEALs (full names not released)
• U.S. Navy Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen (full names not released)
• Jason Cottle as Abu Shabal
• Alex Veadov as Christo^[3]
• Roselyn Sánchez as Morales^[3]
• Nestor Serrano as Walter Ross^[3]
• Emilio Rivera as Sanchez
• Drea Castro as Recruit
• Keo Woolford as Recruit
• Thomas Rosales Jr. as Christo's RHM
• Marco Morales as Cartel & Mexican SOF
• Ailsa Marshall as LT Rorke's Wife

Production

Development

In 2007, Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh of Bandito Brothers Production filmed a video for the Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen which led the United States Navy to allow them to use actual active duty SEALs. After spending so much time working closely with the SEALs, McCoy and Waugh conceived the idea for a modern day action movie about this covert and elite fighting force. As Act of Valor developed with the SEALs on board as advisors, the filmmakers realized that no actors could realistically portray or physically fill the roles they had written and the actual SEALs were drafted to star in the film. The SEALs will remain anonymous, as none of their names appear in the film's credits.^[4]

For the Navy, the film is an initiative to recruit SEALs.^[5] According to The Huffington Post, the Navy required the active-duty SEALs to participate.^[6]

Relativity Media acquired the rights to the project on June 12, 2011 for $13 million and a $30 million in prints and advertising commitment. Deadline.com called it "the biggest money paid for a finished film with an unknown cast".^[7] The production budget was estimated to be between $15 million and $18 million.^[8]

Principal photography

Filming took place in Cambodia where an explosion was shot in Phnom Penh with 300 children as extras.^[9] Scenes were shot in San Diego at Blue Foot Bar and in a house in the North Park area.^[10] Other locations included Mexico, Puerto Rico,^[10] Ukraine, Florida,^[10] and at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.^[11] The crew filmed at Navy training sites to provide realistic settings, such as a drug cartel base, a terrorist camp on an isolated island, and a smuggler's yacht.^[8]

Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut used Canon EOS 5D Mark II cameras with Zeiss ZE and Panavision Primo lenses. The cameras followed the SEALs' planned out missions in the film.^[4] Hurlbut used an 18mm Zeiss ZE mounted on the SEALs' helmets to capture their point of view. The 25mm Zeiss ZE was used to capture natural light coming through windows. The 21mm Zeiss ZE was used as a stake cam so a truck could drive over it.^[11] The Navy held final cut privileges^[4] in order to remove any frames to address security concerns and kept raw footage to use for real-life training and other purposes.^[8]

Marketing

The trailer was shown on the official website of the video game Battlefield 3 which included free downloadable dogtags to be used within any version of the game^[12]

It was also aired during ESPN's coverage of the first Carrier Classic college basketball game, and on Fox during the New York Giants at Green Bay Packers 2011 Divisional Playoff game. It was shown on CBS during the Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots America Football Conference Championship game, on Fox during the San Francisco Forty-Niners and New York Giants National Football Conference Championship game, and on NBC during the Super Bowl.

Along with the release of the film, a novel was also made, titled Act of Valor and was written by Dick Couch and George Galadorisi.

Release

Act of Valor was scheduled to be released on February 17, 2012 in the United States to coincide with Presidents' Day,^[4] but was pushed back to February 24, 2012.^[13] The film was released in the UK and Ireland on March 23 as Act of Valour by Momentum Pictures

Reception

The film opened with generally negative reviews. Based on 119 reviews, it received a 25% approval rating from professional critics on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 4.6/10. Among 30 top critics, it obtained an approval rating of 20% with the consensus saying, "It's undeniably reverent of the real-life heroes in its cast, but Act of Valor lets them down with a clichéd script, stilted acting, and a jingoistic attitude that ignores the complexities of war."^[14] Metacritic assigned the film an average rating of 42/100 based on 31 reviews.^[15]

However, despite the negative critical reaction, the film opened at the top of the box office, earning $24,700,000 in its first weekend. Audience reaction was highly positive; moviegoers polled by CinemaScore gave the movie a very strong "A" grade.^[16] Based on 36,542 ratings, 80% of viewers said they "liked it" on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 4.1/5.^[14]

Many reviews, both positive and negative, have expressed praise for the action sequences while criticizing the plot and acting. Claudia Puig from USA Today, for example, said the action in the film is "breathtaking," but gave the film an overall negative review, in which she wrote that "the soldiers' awkward line readings are glaring enough to distract from the potency of the story."^[17] Similarly, Amy Biancolli from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "[Act of Valor is] intended to wow audiences with high-test action while planting a giant wet kiss on the smacker of the U.S. military – and it scores at both tasks," but that, ultimately, "the film gets snagged by its own narrative convention."^[18] Michael Rechtshaffen from The Hollywood Reporter had a similar opinion, stating, "Although the film has its undeniably immersive, convincing moments, the merging of dramatic re-creations and on-camera 'performances' proves less seamlessly executed than those masterfully coordinated land, sea and air missions."^[19] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two and a half out of four stars, and complained that "we don't get to know the characters as individuals, they don't have personality traits, they have no back stories, they don't speak in colorful dialogue, and after the movie you'd find yourself describing events but not people."^[20]

Accolades

The film is nominated as Choice Action Movie for the upcoming Teen Choice Awards.^[21]

Soundtrack

Relativity Media released the film's soundtrack on February 21, 2012. It includes 10 songs by country music artists. The first cut on the soundtrack, Keith Urban's "For You", was released as a single.

References

Further reading

• Jurgensen, John (August 26, 2011). "Hollywood Tries a New Battle Plan". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on October 21, 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576528293606172306.html. Retrieved October 21, 2011. 

External links

• Official website
• Act of Valor at the Internet Movie Database
• Act of Valor at AllRovi
• Act of Valor at Box Office Mojo
• Act of Valor at Rotten Tomatoes
• Act of Valor at Metacritic