Posted on 10/14/2011 6:09:29 PM PDT by Hojczyk
Via Jonathan Last, this is as close as most of America will ever get to watching real SEALs in action. How do I know? Because the troops here are all played by … active-duty Navy SEALs. Really.
It started out as a training video and things just sort of ballooned:
Act of Valor has an unusual backstory. The film, directed by Mike “Mouse” McCoy and Scott Waugh, started out as a training video for Navy SEALS. The Navy liked what they saw so much that they decided to turn it into a documentary.
Then, they decided to make a feature, and hired screenwriter Kurt Johnstad (300) to create a fictional story about a squad that goes on a covert mission to recover a kidnapped CIA agent.
Another interesting aspect of the upcoming feature, which will hit theaters on February 17, is that the SEALS are played by actual SEALS. The bad guys, however, are played by actors, including Emilio Rivera and Roselyn Sanchez.
This sort of thing has worked before. And thanks to the SEALs’ new place in the national consciousness post-Bin Laden, there are bound to be curiosity-seekers swinging by the theater who might not have bitten on this last year. Exit question: How much at the box office? Over/under is $50 million.
Update: Commenters are wondering whether the Navy put up the money — i.e. our money — to bankroll this. Good question. Maybe that’s the way we’ll finally eliminate the deficit. All Obama needs to do is finance ten or twenty thousand superhero blockbusters and we’re out of the fiscal hole.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
BEST War of Northern Agession movie hands down is GODS & Generals, BY FAR-!!!
The combat medic and the corpsman get my vote. However it takes every swinging Richard plus the gals to support one infantryman or marine. How many tell you -”I was a clerk in combat or a supply type?” Not many, but; we damn sure need them.
“All Quiet” was a very anti war movie. It was not preachy nor did it try to show the soldiers as evil killers.
Anti war in the right way in that we need to know what we are sending those young men into before we do it.
I agree, Das Boot was the greatest war movie ever made. It must have been tough in the late years of the war for U-boat sailors. Das Boot made you feel it.
A war movie once considered the greatest movie ever made is now considered racist and the D W Griffith award has even been retired.
While doing research on my family from SE Georgia I began reading contemporary accounts, small town newspapers, letters etc. of the period right after the Civil War.
I concluded that not only was “Birth of a Nation” accurate in it’s portrayals of the Black Union troops and the Klan, he probably even pulled a few punches. It was actually worse than the movie. Now the world has changed so much that no historian would admit it even if he knew what happened. Finally after so many women and children had begged the Union General in charge to remove the Black troops, he finally decided to risk the ire of the radical republicans in congress and pulled them out.
To Hell and Back
True story
Main actor Audie Murphy played himself
Can’t get any more real than that PERIOD
The zip sound of those shells coming in has never been matched.
Kelly’s Heroes is my fav WW2 film. Downfall is also very good.
definitely looks kick ass
+1
my bro was a seal and recognizes some of these guys from training, looks amazing!
Jawohl, and ‘Saving Private Ryan’ was pretty moving.
Another vote for Kelly’s Heroes. When I worked at a video store, it was one of the first movies I purchased. I’d love a “director’s cut” but I know it’s probably impossible.
Not surprisingly, I know a 90-something, WWII tank-driving vet who simply hates war movies. He loves vintage comedies and animated stuff: Miyazaki and Pixar movies. Boggled.
Exactly.
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Heroes of Telemark
Bravo Zulu ping...
I agree. I liked ‘’Kat’’.
“Northern Aggression’’? You mean “Southern Sedition’’, don’t you?
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