Act of Idiocy

For the last couple of weeks I have been bombarded by ads for the upcoming Razzie shoe in movie Act of Valor. Every time one of the ads comes on I feel the bile begin to rise in my gut and I start to yell at whoever has the misfortune of being in the room with me. What irks me the most about this abomination is that it isn't just a run of the mill shitty movie, no, this atrocity is bringing a little something special to the table. Instead of just using horrible actors this movie has decided to use actual active duty Navy SEALs. I know this because the commercials mention it roughly every 4.8 seconds. This gives me two reasons to absolutely eviscerate this movie.

1. When I watch an action movie I couldn't possibly cares less about whether it is authentic or realistic. You know what the best action movie is? Die Hard, duh. Do you have any idea how many times John McClane should have died? A thousand, roughly. Having to run across all of the broken glass while barefoot should have been enough to completely hobble him the entire rest of the ordeal, but is that the movie I want to see? Hell no. I want to see the heroes of my action films get shot, look angry, yell something about it just being a flesh wound and then move on to kill somewhere between 10 and 432 more bad guys. The only time that you want realism to factor into an action or war movie it's when it is something like Saving Private Ryan. And let's be honest, Act of Valor isn't going to be Saving Private Ryan. Cinematically I'm not sure if this turd will even be as good as Saving Ryan's Privates. Introducing extreme realism to a movie like this can only hurt the end product.

I think the best way to explain this is using the amazing Nintendo game Contra. What most people remember about Contra is that if you entered the Konami code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, select, start) you would have 30 lives instead of the normal 3 codes. Do you know why you remember this? Because the game was fucking impossible without the code since every time your player got shot he died. Almost all video games allow you to get hit a couple of times before it ends your life, Contra was one of the very first to introduce "realism" by making you die after 1 hit, and it sucked. It sucked so much that the producers of the game put in a secret code to get around it in order to make the game beatable. It's the same thing when it comes to action movies, 99% of the time the realism only takes away from my enjoyment.

2. Don't active duty Navy SEALs have anything better to do than be in shitty movies? These are the guys who go miles behind enemy lines with no possible chance for reinforcements and do amazing covert operations. These are the guys who hunted down and took out Bin Laden. Shouldn't they be doing something just a tiny bit more important than starring in a d grade movie? Like, oh, I don't know, training to take out the next terrorist threat? These are among the most elite soldiers that our country has and we are letting them spend their days off shooting a home movie detailing EXACTLY HOW THEY OPERATE?! This seems to be a pretty idiotic move if you ask me. Now, I'm not saying that Al Qaeda is going to watch Act of Valor and suddenly have the upper hand against us because the movie is so real. But we are talking about the frickin' military. If there is a defining characteristic about the military, other than shitty haircuts, it is a lack of humor combined with a desire for secrecy. Wouldn't it seem to make sense that they wouldn't want to let a bunch of active duty SEALs act in a movie and attempt to make it look as realistic as possible?

Mind you, if this movie wasn't going to completely blow I don't think I would give a shit one way or the other. The only selling points for the film are realism and the appearance of active duty SEALS and it has been shoved down my throat through constant commercials for the last month and quite frankly both of those selling points ASSURE THAT THE MOVIE WILL BE HORRIBLE. So, take my advice and commit a real Act of Valor this weekend by not going to see this movie.