Act of Valor

Starring: Active Duty United States Marines

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Act of Valor is a refreshingly new and ambitious idea, that takes the stories of active U.S. Marines and turns them into one big story, which is then played out by the very Marines who experienced them. I loved the concept, but this film falls way short of expectations. I believe the purpose of military is the service and protection of our nation, but in Act of Valor the Marines are portrayed as trigger happy Americans. We see the Marines, following up on CIA Intel, going into four different foreign countries, shooting first and asking questions later. Is this really the image of our military that we want to portray to the rest of the world? Regardless of what's real and what's not, these Marines come off as ruthless, with an attitude of 'fuck you we're American, we'll do what we want.' As expected, the action scenes were some of the best and most realistic I've ever seen. I would except nothing less, being that the film features men who have been in actual combat and know what it looks like. The acting, also as excepted, was really awful, but for the first time in the twenty month history of this blog I won't blame the actors for it, since after all, they aren't really actors. The action sequences alone more than make up for the shitty acting job, but again, I have a real problem with the message this film is sending out to the world. Chronicling the heroism and every day life of a U.S. Marine is admirable, but portraying them like Bruce Willis in Die Hard isn't doing them any favors, in fact it's making an already difficult job harder.