Act of Valour

Directed by Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh. Starring Roselyn Sánchez, Nestor Serrano, Emilio Rivera, US Navy Seals, US Navy Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen 16 cert, general release, 102 min

‘NOW HE’S another watchman standing guard while our world sleeps . . . ” Seriously, dog, you got to see this movie to believe it.

It’s not like a recruitment video for the Navy Seals: it is a recruitment video for the Navy Seals. Bought. Paid for. No phoney baloney Top Gun/Black Hawk Down stuff.

Like one of those really long commercials they play on the Shopping Channel. But with shooting. And honest-to-god real-life Navy Seals.

It’s a smart-thinking movie, too. Turns out we were way wrong – the war on terror is only now just rocking into view. Turns out that “order and chaos wrap the world, one often disguised as the other”.

There’s more: Turns out the Jihadists have got together with the Mexican drug cartels and illegal border-crossers. And they’re linked to the Philippines and Somalia through this Jewish Ukrainian businessman. And you just know he’s evil because he’s playing Mendelssohn on the violin while he manufactures suicide bomber jackets packed with ceramic ball-bearings that, when detonated by unthinking terrorists, will be 10 times worse than 9/11. Really.

It falls to the Navy Seals to save everybody by blowing everything up. None of the dudes can act for shit but, when it comes to blowing stuff up, they’re your guys. It’s cool, too, because it’s like watching a Beta version of Halo except that it’s a Beta version of real-life explosions. Kaboom, Ahmed.

Admittedly, it was kind of disappointing that the guys were only fighting against humanoid enemies. It would have been way cooler if they had borrowed some of the gas clouds or energy clouds from that Babylon 5 show. But I guess they had to be realistic in order to make up for the dialogue, the acting, the special effects, the mawkishness, the closeted homoeroticism, the jingoism, the appalling black propaganda, the subnormal sloganeering, the endless justifications, the sickening Thanatos and the ideological mire.

Seriously, dog, you got to see Act of Valor to believe it.