Act of Valour in some ways is a unique film – the protagonists are portrayed by real life American soldiers. In other ways it’s about as generic as they come. Needless to say, the film gave me plenty of ammunition to work with when it comes to blowing to pieces.
- Act of Valour
Directors: Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh
Cast: Alex Veadov, Roselyn Sanchez and Nestor
Running time: 110 minutes
Age restriction: 13 LV
Genre: Action
Valour follows a standard dumb action film storyline: the American soldiers go in to kill all the terrorists with their elite skills and rescue the damsel in distress. How then could it go so wrong?
When I judge a movie, falling asleep in it is just as bad as it being unwatchable. Act of Valour manages to defy the odds to become the first action film that actually induces sleep. Why is this so? Because there is no drama whatsoever – the characters are beyond paper thin and this very well could be attributed to the fact that none of the heroes are actors. I suppose in a bid for realism, the producers thought “Hey, it’ll be more realistic if use soldiers instead of true and tested talent”, heck, even bad talent would have been better.
The saddest part is that the actors behave less like soldiers than an actor would – especially in the dialogue scenes, which thankfully aren’t that plentiful. However, it pains me to say that action scenes may have been even more dull than the brief ’dramatic’ intermissions. These sequences are populated by soldiers with heat seeking bullets that always manage to find their victims foreheads without fail (the American army: saving money one bullet at a time). It’s actually uncanny, half way through the film I was convinced that the enemies had magnetic metal plating on the back of their heads.
The most exciting part of the Valour was when a woman got her hands drilled through during a sedated torture session…which is pretty depressing as you don’t even see gory visuals, just a cut to black. It’s truly hard to find words to express how mind-numbingly repetitive and boring this film was. Technically it is inferior, the acting deplorable, and the story forgettable. All that can be said is this film plays out like a piece of patriotic propaganda – terrible, cheaply manipulative propaganda that places no effort on quality, just the idea that if you become a soldier, you’re practically invincible.
“You mean they’re paying you for this?”, “Yep, I’ve been getting some acting lessons from the sarge, he says I’m gonna make it BIG!”
The Target
American delinquints ready to put their teen angst to work for the government – seriously, that’s all I’ve got and to be honest I have no idea why this got released here.
The Bottom Line
Act of Valour is less like a hollywood movie and more like a feature length propaganda film – it tries it’s best to justify why the worlds greatest superpower’s army are a bunch of superheroes and it gets that much right…but it’s still wrong. But politics aside, it’s easily one of the most dull, dreary, and sleep inducing films that I’ve ever sat through (I do recall drifting off for a few moments actually). What’s worse is that the action set pieces are even more boring than the dialogue scenes – however few they are – and this lurches on for almost two hours. The worst kind of film, is one that is boring, and that’s why this film gets the In the Kan stamp of disapproval.
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