Valorous Attempt

I was having some difficulty deciding what to talk on today.  Having the Oscars on in the background I figured I would stick with film again and talk about the last movie I saw Act of Valor.  There will be spoilers below but the plot really wasn’t all that important for the movie.  I’ll still announce when I’m disclosing something important to the plot.  I’ll try to be socially conscientious again next post.  Act of Valor, for those who don’t know, is a film with actual on duty service personnel using true military tactics.  It’s kind of confusing as this was essentially a mash up of military reality, bad 80’s action movies and modern video games.  It didn’t always quite work.  At times it felt like we were present at a real extraction, a real mission but the problem is that you can’t do reality all the way in a film.  Anything a producer or director gets their hands on has to be better than real, it has to be hyper-real,  an imitation of real but better.  The problem is you can’t do real but better if you are going for real.  The movie felt truly confused at times.  And that’s a problem.  We, as an audience, can grasp a direction.  It doesn’t take much for us to understand that when there is cheesy music, bad one liners, thousands of bullets poured at the hero but he miraculously remains unharmed even through his muscles take up the whole of the camera frame that we watching something absolutely silly but fun.  We expect silliness and explosions and over the top action.  But if all of sudden it turns sour and they interject a serious plot line about a love interest dying from cancer we are not quite ready for this switch.  This film couldn’t quite choose what direction it wanted to go in.  It had serious moments, it tried for the buddy comedy moments but Marines just aren’t funny.  Scary, intimidating, yeah, but funny when forced to recite someone else’s lines not so much.  And that was part of the problem.  We saw correct tactics, correct gun play.  Squeezing the shoulder when they were behind to silently announce position without noise.  But it’s a fucking movie and we want more than looking like the subject we want to attach emotionally to a character.   Navy Seals don’t emote so well for the camera.  These fuckers kill shit and protect freedom.  They don’t act.  Not well at least.  They can strut around and wave guns and shoot shit.  That they do well.  But the second they talk it’s like when the jocks in school were called to read a passage in a book.  No inflection, no correct pauses, just monotone speech and trying to get through it without being laughed at. They knew they shouldn’t have been called on the teacher immediately regrets and everyone decided not to speak on it again.  The smart kids got a moment to snicker and the theater kids roll their eyes in cool condescension.

I wish the guys could emote properly.  But the problem is the film was such a rah-rah go America movement that it seemed no one wanted to show fragility, fear or vulnerability.  I saw Restrepo and I saw fear, saw emotion, saw damn tough men cry.  There was too much coolness, too much control even when shit, predictably, went south.  There was death, there was injury and they weren’t indestructible but there was this presence like America itself was fighting the bad guys not this collection of men.  We never felt fear as an audience for this group.  Only at one point in the movie did I feel true suspense.  And sadly that moment was relieved before it played out properly.  Suspense is integral.  It’s that thing that makes you actually question whether the hero will make it out okay.  Like the suspense I had watching the Oscars.  Not about who would win but if Angelina would ever eat again.  Seriously I’m worried the lady might actually be a mummy with flesh wrapped over her.  She looks like she has a tape worm or something.  No wonder she adopts, sex might break her brittle frame.

So we have bad acting.  I can forgive this, it is an action movie.  We have bad pacing and stilted dialogue that’s okay too I guess.  But the problem is there were moments that were really impressive mixed in with moments of garbage.  SPOILERS.  There was a torture and abduction scene.  The abduction scene was ugly and scary and fast and horrifying.  It was cold, evil and frightening.  Everything it should be.  The camera work was  great in this part.  And the torture scene was painful without being too gory.  It hurt and you related to this pain, you related to the character.  Something, sadly, that lacked from other parts.  There was a lot of shock and awe and braggadocio.  So many other parts of this movie were basically action movie rip offs.  The opening scene was all quick camera work and exposition.  Some good but all predictable typical action nonsense.  The bike part was a nauseating for no good reason.  They had quick cuts that introduced the angry, mysterious villain, the nervous female, the cute kids in a school, and the local flavor of the foreign nation.  Other scenes, in between our brave service men kicking as and taking names and emoting like fucking animate rocks, we had a stock villain curl his lips exaggerate his expression and wide eyed drop a grenade from the floor above.  And I wanted this movie not to be awful or at least only awful in a certain way I suppose.  If it wasn’t so obvious that it tried so hard to be good then spectacularly failed at some things and surprised at others.  I could be angry at the film, indignant even, what a waste of money!  But I can’t.   I mean I can be angry at the shitty plot and slapped together nature.  I can be angry at the mixed feelings and the scenes and the deflated suspense.   Actually I am pissed at the fucking interrogation.  It had a few moments of being awesome but like so much it waffled.  It deflated too quickly it was just too fucking easy.  Just the spector of America folds the bastard quickly and we come out looking nice.  No hands on the fucker, just cool condescension.  Fuck that.  I can’t believe that shit.  I want to see the bastard kneecapped at the start of the interview and a thumb in the wound.  Ugly, angry patriots taking justice into their own hands is what I expect.  I’d still root for that.

The worst offense is the video game bullshit.  If you saw the tremendous pile of hot garbage called Doom you might remember the five minute first person bullshit scene where the camera is the protagonist and it goes about looking just like the game kicking ass  The Rock and all his bulging muscles could do nothing to save that waste of celluloid.  They pulled this first person nonsense too often, in Valor not Doom, and it worked at times but the overuse was just unpleasant.  And worse still is the ripping off of the modern warfare series with the man going down after being shot and redeeming himself with red vision pulling out a hand gun and shooting bad guys as he loses consciousness.  Video games have a been a struggling medium vying for respect and credibility and they slowly over the years have gained acceptance through art shows and concerts as the generation who have played them have grown up.  But video games emulate movies.  Movies have not really emulated games well.  They’ve tried for years but rarely turned the built in audience into cash.  The Mario Brother disaster still haunts me.  Hel the stars on the set of the movie were drinking heavily as they knew the tremendous mistake they were perpetrating on our poor unsuspecting eyes and ears.

But if they make another one of these I’ll sit through it.  Because, let’s face it, it’s still better than The Expendables and god damn do I want one of those fucking miniguns they used, that shit was undeniably cool and its mere sight raised all the audience members testosterone levels to professionally wrestler level.  America… Fuck Yeah.

Ben