I was excited to see this movie as it’s proudly touted that it was made with “Active duty Navy Seals” and the director is a former stuntman who should know his way around an action sequence. Well, it turns out that taking hits is a lot easier than staging them in a satisfying way. And for all the movie’s boasts of “realism,” it doesn’t feel real.
What Works: This movie has one sequence that really, really works. It’s early on in the film when the central Navy Seal team has to rescue a captured CIA agent in, I believe, Costa Rica but it could be any lush latin American country. The staging of this sequence is riveting, suspenseful, and (something the rest of the movie lacks) realistic. Watching how the Seals move as a collective body (one seal shoots a guy on a pier and another reaches up from the water to quietly pull his body into it without making a splash) fleshes them out more than any heavy handed scene involving them hugging their wife goodbye ever could.
What Doesn’t Work: However, the next couple action sequences don’t have that same lived-out feel. They just feel like set pieces that could be in any action movie from Rambo onward. And that brings me to the movie’s real problem: it just doesn’t feel as real as the makers claim. There’s an odd formality to the way the Seals act and also the dialogue isn’t remotely convincing. But no one really comes to a movie like this to discuss the merits of breathy voiceovers that sound like the guy from Scream is talking (damn these Seals are made to seem realllllly masculine with some deeeep voices). What you want to know is “does the action deliver?” And I would have to say “Not really.” Except for the sequence I talked about above, all of the others are really hazy and not detailed enough to make them pop, and that may have been because they ran out of money on this independently financed movie.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Even more so than Red Tails, this movie is a walking advertisement for the armed services, so any suggestions I would make wouldn’t fly with the movie’s intentions. This movie balances being respectful for the Navy Seals and outright blood lust fantasy action in a way that just never gels.
Hollywood is desperately trying to get the 15 – 25 young male demographics into movie theathers. But based on the fact that this movie got funded by a major studio, they still don’t have a clue.