Act of Valor

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Act of Valor
Theatrical release poster
Directed byMouse McCoy
Scott Waugh
Written byKurt Johnstad
Produced byMouse McCoy
Scott Waugh
StarringU.S. Navy SEALs
Roselyn Sánchez
Jason Cottle
Alex Veadov
Nestor Serrano
Emilio Rivera
CinematographyShane Hurlbut
Edited byMichael Tronick
Scott Waugh
Music byNathan Furst
Production
company
Bandito Brothers
Distributed byRelativity Media
Release date
  • February 24, 2012 (2012-02-24)
Running time
111 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$12 million[1]
Box office$81.3 million[1]

Act of Valor is a 2012 American

U.S. Navy Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen, as well as Roselyn Sánchez, Jason Cottle, Alex Veadov, Nestor Serrano, and Emilio Rivera
.

Act of Valor was released in the United States on February 24, 2012, by Relativity Media. The film received generally negative reviews from critics, but was a box office success, grossing over $81 million worldwide against a production budget of $12 million. It was nominated for Best Original Song at the 70th Golden Globe Awards.[3]

Plot

In

Chechen terrorist, Abu Shabal, escapes to a training camp in Indonesia. Elsewhere in Costa Rica, two CIA
officers, Walter Ross and Lisa Morales, meet to consolidate intelligence about their target, a drug smuggler named Mikhail "Christo" Troykovich. Christo's men kill Ross and capture Morales, who is imprisoned in a jungle compound and tortured.

At

SEAL Team 7 are at home. Lieutenant
Rorke confides to Chief Dave that his wife is pregnant and has the entire team spend time together with their families until their next deployment. A squad from the platoon consisting of Rorke, Dave, Wiemy, Mikey, Ray, Sonny, and Ajay, is then deployed to Costa Rica to exfiltrate Morales.

The SEALs insert into the jungle via

quick reaction force attempts to pursue and the SEALs commandeer a truck to exfiltrate. The pursuit forces them to revert to a tertiary extraction point where two SWCC
boats extract the team, with Mikey being wounded in action.

Christo and Shabal, who are revealed to have been childhood friends, meet in

explosive vests
.

On the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard, Rorke is informed that the intelligence recovered confirms Shabal and Christo were working together. Shabal seeks to bring jihad to the U.S., while Christo provides the routes for smuggling drugs and people into the U.S. Ajay and Ray are sent to Somalia, where an arms transfer involving Shabal is taking place. The remaining SEALs, comprising Rorke, Dave, Sonny and Weimy, 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 Dave a letter to give to his family in case he is killed.

Shabal and sixteen terrorists are found to be on an island off

interrogate him, learning that Shabal's plot is to outdo the September 11 attacks
.

The SEALs are informed that Shabal is en route to the U.S. via tunnels underneath a milk factory, and are ordered to link up with Mexican Special Forces and neutralize the remaining targets. Arriving at the factory, the SEALs and Mexican forces launch an assault there, engaging numerous Mexican cartel and Shabal's terrorists in the process. During the gunfight, a combatant throws a grenade, and Rorke sacrifices himself by diving on it to save his team before it detonates, killing him. Dave pursues the terrorists and shoots them as they try to escape through the tunnels. He is then shot several times and gravely wounded by Shabal, who is intercepted and killed by Sonny before he could execute Dave.

At home, Rorke is given a military funeral with full honors, where the SEALs pay their respects. It is then revealed that Dave's narration throughout the movie was a written letter meant for Rorke's son. The film ends with a dedication to 60 U.S. Navy SEAL and Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen (SWCC) killed in action since 9/11 along with a listing of their names as well as a photo montage of fallen public servants.

Cast

  • Jason Cottle as Yuri / Mohammad Abu Shabal, a Chechen terrorist
  • Rorke Denver as Lieutenant Rorke James Engel, field commander of SEAL Team 7
  • Dave Hansen as Chief Dave Nolan, a Chief of SEAL Team 7
  • Sonny Manson as Sonny, a member of SEAL Team 7
  • Brendan “Weimy” Weimholt as 'Weimy', a member of SEAL Team 7
  • Ajay "A.J." James as Ajay, a member of SEAL Team 7
  • Ray Mendoza as Ray, a member of SEAL Team 7
  • Mike Everett as Mikey, a member of SEAL Team 7
  • Katelyn Lyons as Lieutenant Lyons, a US Navy officer (the real character serves in the
    U.S. Army
    )
  • William "Bill" Austin as SWCC Boat Senior Chief Billy
  • Duncan Smith as Captain Duncan Smith
  • Callaghan as Admiral Callaghan (the true character name is Rear Admiral Dennis Moynihan)
  • Alex Veadov as Mikhail 'Christo' Troykovich,[4] a drug smuggler working with Shabal
  • Roselyn Sánchez as CIA officer Lisa Morales
  • Nestor Serrano as CIA officer Walter Ross
  • Emilio Rivera as Sanchez, a head cartel thug
  • Ernie Reyes Jr. as Recruit, a Filipino jihadist suicide bomber recruited by Shabal to launch terrorist attacks over the States
  • Drea Castro as Recruit, a Filipino jihadist suicide bomber recruited by Shabal to launch terrorist attacks over the States
  • Marissa Labog as Recruit, a Filipino jihadist suicide bomber recruited by Shabal to launch terrorist attacks over the States
  • Keo Woolford as Recruit, a Filipino jihadist suicide bomber recruited by Shabal to launch terrorist attacks over the States
  • Thomas Rosales, Jr.
    as Christo's RHM
  • Antoni Corone as yacht henchman
  • Gonzalo Menendez as Commander Pedros, a Mexican Special Forces commander who teams up with the SEAL Team to take down Shabal
  • Ailsa Marshall as Jackie Engel, Lieutenant Engel's wife
  • Derrick Van Orden as Senior Chief Otto Miller

Production

Development

In 2007, Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh of Bandito Brothers Production filmed a promotional ad video for the

Legendary Pictures' founder and then-chairman/CEO Thomas Tull serves as executive producer.[6]

For the Navy, the film is an initiative to recruit SEALs and SWCC.

The Huffington Post, the Navy required the active-duty SEALs to participate.[8]

Following a bidding war with Dark Castle Entertainment, Alcon Entertainment (both companies had their own respective distribution deals with Legendary's then-partner Warner Bros.), Lionsgate, and FilmDistrict, 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 Hollywood called it "the biggest money paid for a finished film with an unknown cast".[6] The production budget was estimated to be between $15 million and $18 million.[9]

Principal photography

Shooting of a scene with SWCCs from Special Boat Team 22

Filming took place in

John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.[12]

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.[9]

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.[5] 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.[12] The Navy held final cut privileges[5] in order to remove any frames to address security concerns and kept raw footage to use for real-life training and other purposes.[9]

Release

Act of Valor was scheduled to be released on February 17, 2012 in the U.S. to coincide with

Presidents' Day,[5] 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
.

Home video releases

Act of Valor was released on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on June 5, 2012 with a rating of

R.[14]

Accolades

The film was a

Choice Action Movie
.

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 28% based on 144 reviews with an average rating of 4.54/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "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."[16] Metacritic assigned the film an average score of 40 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[17] Audiences on CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A", on an A+ to F scale.[18]

The film opened at #1 at the box office, earning $24.5 million in its opening weekend from 3,039 theaters for an average of $8,054 per theater.

Many reviews, both positive and negative, 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."[19] 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."[20] 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."[21]

antisemitic subtext by bloggers Debbie Schlussel[23] and Pamela Geller[24] as well as other Jewish sources.[25]

Soundtrack

Main article: Act of Valor: The Album

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. The song was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.[3]

See also

References

  1. ^
    Internet Movie Database
    . Retrieved June 11, 2012.
  2. ^ Buchanan, Jason. "Act of Valor". Allmovie. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  3. ^ a b Nikki Finke (April 24, 2007). "lasse_hallstrom.jpg". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved December 15, 2012.
  4. ^ "Act of Valor (2012)". Yahoo! Movies. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  5. ^ a b c d "Hollywood movie stars real-life SEALs". WTKR. October 10, 2011. Archived from the original on November 14, 2011. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  6. ^
    PMC
    . Retrieved October 20, 2011.
  7. ^ Anderson, John (February 17, 2012). "On Active Duty for the Movies (Real Ammo)". The New York Times. Retrieved February 24, 2012.
  8. The Huffington Post. AOL
    . Retrieved February 24, 2012.
  9. ^
    Hearst Corporation. Archived
    from the original on February 12, 2012. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  10. ^ Eloy, Cedric (February 23, 2011). "Working to make Cambodia a popular location for filming". The Location Guide. Archived from the original on April 2, 2012. Retrieved October 20, 2011.
  11. ^ a b c Anderson, Cathy (June 2010). "Filming downtown brings opportunities". San Diego Community Newspaper Group. Archived from the original on April 4, 2012. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  12. ^ a b Hurlbut, Shane (February 26, 2011). "Zeiss: A Cinematic Journey on "Act of Valor"". Hurlbut Visuals. Archived from the original on October 31, 2011. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  13. ^ Labrecque, Jeff (December 17, 2011). "'Act of Valor' trailer: I feel the need – the need to bleed!". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
  14. ^ "Act of Valor - CompleteSeasonDVDs.com". Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved June 1, 2012.
  15. The Huffington Post
    . May 18, 2012. Retrieved May 19, 2012.
  16. Fandango. Rotten Tomatoes
    . Retrieved July 25, 2019.
  17. CBS Interactive
    . Retrieved March 9, 2012.
  18. The Wrap
    . February 25, 2012. Retrieved March 3, 2012.
  19. ^ Claudia Puig (February 23, 2012). "'Act of Valor' has amazing action". USA Today. Retrieved February 23, 2012.
  20. ^ Amy Biancolli (February 23, 2012). "'Act of Valor' review: Action a hit, story a miss". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved February 23, 2012.
  21. ^ Michael Rechtshaffen (February 23, 2012). "'Act of Valor': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 23, 2012.
  22. ^ Ebert, Roger (February 22, 2012). "Act of Valor". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved February 24, 2012.
  23. ^ "Act of Valor OUTRAGE: Navy SEALs Movie's Terrorist is . . . JEWISH (Tortures, Murders CIA Agents, Smuggles Jihadists into U.S.)".
  24. ^ "Don't See "Act of Valor"…… SEALs Battle the Jew | Pamela Geller". Archived from the original on August 16, 2016. Retrieved July 4, 2016.
  25. ^ ""Act of Valor": An Act of Bigotry?". jewishvoiceny.com. Archived from the original on December 13, 2013. Retrieved January 12, 2022.

Further reading

External links

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