Act of Valor, Starring Real U.S. Navy SEALs

Perhaps the unlikeliest action sequence in this film is based on a real-life event, in which Private Channing Moss survived the impact and injuries from an unexploded Taliban RPM that struck his abdomen with full force. It hardly needs to be said, but don’t try that at home. It also depicts the potentially catastrophic consequences when Islamist terrorists try to exploit the porous southern border, but surely we have fixed all those problems in the time since this film first released in 2012, right? Regardless, the courage and dedication of the U.S. Navy SEALs and Special Combat Crewmen remain a source of national pride. Many of the dedicated real-life Navy SEALs and Crewmen played fictionalized versions of themselves in Mouse McCoy & Scott Waugh’s Act of Valor, which makes fitting viewing for the Fourth of July weekend, when it airs on El Rey Rebel.

It starts in the Philippines, with the assassination of the American ambassador, who was instrumental in coordinating anti-terror alliances. It was perpetrated by the pro-terror alliance of Chechen Islamist terrorist Mohammad “Yuri” Abu Shabal and his old pal, “Christo” Troykovich, an international smuggler-money launderer. Operating out of failed states like Somalia, they are training suicide bombers to infiltrate the United States from Mexico, with specially designed vests would not set off metal detectors.

SEAL Team 7’s Bandito Platoon only learns of the evil plan from intel gathered after they rescue CIA Officer Lisa Morales from Christo’s thugs. Suddenly, their mission extends and expands. That is rather inconvenient for Chief Dave Nolan and his close friend, Lt. Rorke James Engel, who is due for leave in anticipation of his son’s birth. Yes, that kind of happy news never bodes well in movies, does it.

Since real deal SEAL were involved in Act of Valor right from its inception, the action sequences are highly realistic and consequently very intense. Rorke Denver and Dave Hansen develop some nice comradery as Engel and Nolan. Beyond them, the rest of the SEALs have little character development or even identifiable personality types. However, pro-thesps Roselyn Sanchez and Nestor Serrano look and sound smart and snappy together as Morales and her colleague, CIA Officer Walter Ross. Indeed, it is refreshing to watch a film that considers the CIA part of the good guys.

SEAL Team: Trust, But Verify Pt. 1 & 2

Considering how hard it is for SEAL Team Bravo to smuggle a defector out of North Korea, just imagine how difficult it must be for Pastor Kim Seungeun, the real-life protagonist of Beyond Utopia. Granted, the SEALs stand out more in the DPRK. They are also trying to rescue a scientist who is integral to the regime’s advanced weapons research. Initially, only the first four episodes of SEAL Team’ s fifth season were supposed to air on CBS (including this two-part season premiere), before the franchise transferred to Paramount+, but then the strikes happened. Now, the entire fifth season is part of their new Fall schedule. It is refreshing to see actual bad guys cast as TV bad guys, including the North Koreans in “Trust, but Verify,” which returns to free TV this Thursday.

The team has their own stuff to deal with at the start of the season. Chief Warrant Officer Ray Perry has been away, getting treatment for his PTSD, which only Master Chief Jason Hayes knows, at least so far. Hayes is still trying to shrug off the lingering effects of a serious head injury that might be more severe than he wants to admit. Special Operator Clay Spenser is finally planning his long-deferred honeymoon, while Special Operator Sonny Quinn is spending time with his newborn. Unfortunately, they must put everything on hold for a “training mission” with the South Koreans.

Of course, it turns out the “training” is just a cover. Instead, they will infiltrate North Korea and exfiltrate Dr. Jin, a high-ranking scientist, whiose wife already defected. Their contact is Kwan Jon-wi, a rescuer, who is much closer to Pastor Kim than the dodgy broker-traffickers he is forced to work with.

Although the two-parter does not reflect the full extent of the DPRK’s extreme dystopian oppression, it still acknowledges the prison-like conditions and constant paranoia of life in the North. Most of the action comes in part 2, which is nicely executed, especially by network TV standards. Keong Sim also has a memorable guest-appearance as the somewhat traumatized Jin.

The Terminal List, on Prime

According to the Navy SEAL Museum, 308 SEALs (and their predecessors, the Navy Underwater Demolition Team members) died in the service of their country. Understandably, Lt. Commander James Reece is quite upset to learn a shadowy cabal decided to add his men to that solemn list. Then they killed his family, as part of a plot to disgrace him. In response, Reece starts compiling his own roll of names in writer-showrunner David DiGilio’s eight-episode The Terminal List, which premieres today on Prime Video.

Reece’s team was due to be rotated back to the States, but they were not about to pass up one final mission. They thought they had the drop on an Iranian chemical weapons specialist, but instead, they were the ones who walked into an ambush. Only Reece and his close comrade Ernest “Boozer” Vickers survived the trap, but Vickers committed suicide soon after returning Stateside. Weirdly, he used his least favorite gun.

Despite suffering the lingering effects of considerable head trauma (which very definitely turns out to be serious), Reece starts questioning discrepancies in the official mission report and the circumstances of Boozer’s suicide. As a result, a hit team tries to take him out, in a manner that will look like suicide. They fail in that respect, but they had already murdered his wife Lauren and daughter Lucy, to frame him to look like a family annihilator. As you would expect, this makes Reece mad, so he starts sleuthing out who might be responsible.

At first, Reece’s only ally is his former SEAL colleague Ben Edwards, who now works at the CIA. However, he starts to trust journalist Katie Buranek. With their help, they start with the dodgy NCIS Agent whitewashing the attempt on his life and follow the trail up to the highest levels government.

There is plenty of SEAL-worthy action in DiGilio’s adaptation of Jack Carr’s novel, but it would have been more fun if the bad guys really were Iranian terrorists. Instead, we get yet another example of the villains being high-ranking American military officers and Big Pharma businessmen. Seriously, how different is this series’ worldview from that of AOC, if at all?

Still, it is clear DiGilio understand the military milieu.  It clearly helped that producer and star Chris Pratt made a concerted effort to hire veterans for positions throughout the crew. At this point, Pratt has instant screen-credibility playing a military officer and family man. We can easily believe him in the role of Reece and get the sense the he shares the values of military families, so we feel his pain and share his desire for payback. Constance Wu shrewdly manages to play up Buranek’s intelligence and minimizes her initial obnoxiousness, so viewers will really start to root for her too. We can also buy their relationship—it is really more of an alliance, not too close, but without any kneejerk antagonism.

JD Pardo and Christina Vidal bring some relatively rare grounded nuance to the series playing the FBI Special Agent and US Marshal pursuing Reece. However, the surprise turncoat-villain is blindingly obvious. Maybe the writing is more to blame than the thesp, but as soon as “X” enters the picture, any experienced thriller watcher will recognize the not-so-well-concealed crookedness.

American Renegades: Navy SEALs Pull a Caper for Bosnia

Navy SEALs are terrific at overthrowing dictators and re-establishing peace, but they are not so skilled at nation-building. However, this team is willing to do a little outside-the-box thinking. The plan (half-baked though it might be) is to recover 300 million dollars-worth of Nazi gold for Bosnian reconstruction efforts—minus their cut. Of course, the clock is ticking and the Bosnian Serbs are out for payback in Steven Quale’s American Renegades (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select theaters.

It gets a little messy, but Matt Barnes’ SEAL team manages to capture and extract a Serbian general right under the noses of his men. The getting in is easy, the getting out involves a tank battle on the streets of mid-1990s Sarajevo. Levin, the joint-operational commander, pretends to rebuke them, but it is definitely a wink-wink-nudge-nudge reprimand. Yet, there are presumably limits to his indulgence. Therefore, the SEALs will do their best to keep it on the downlow when they agree to run an off-the-books mission with both altruistic and mercenary motives.

Stanton Baker, Barnes’ next-in-command has fallen in love with Lara Simic, a local woman working as a waitress, who hopes to help support her country’s reconstruction with her newly incorporated non-profit. She also has some creative fund-raising ideas. As a young boy, her grandfather saw exactly where the National Socialists locked away a shipment of plundered French gold. Shortly thereafter, the resistance blew the local damn, submerging the gold under a new, picturesque lake. Of course, Barnes and his men are at their best under water.

In contrast, this film works much better when it is on dry land. Frankly, the opening action sequence is a lot of rollicking good fun, but the underwater sequences are problematically murky. We can often see when two people are fighting, but we can only hope a good guy wins, whichever one he might be.

Still, you have to give co-screenwriters Luc Besson and Richard Wenk credit for choosing sides, unlike the Peacemaker, which featured a deliberately vague “Balkan” terrorist. In this case, the Bosnians are on the side of the angels and the villains are Serbian, so just deal with it. It is also worth noting that Besson and his French film company EuropaCorp have produced probably the most sympathetic depiction of the American military released in theaters this year.

As you might expect, the best part of the film is J.K. Simmons strutting, bellowing, and just generally hamming it up as Levin. He is always fun to watch and Strike Back’s Sullivan Stapleton makes a nicely understated foil in their scenes together. Unfortunately, there is a lot of time wasted on requisitioning gear and that sort of housekeeping business.

Thanks to Simmons, American Renegades will be a pleasant streaming distraction, but there is nothing special about it as an action movie. We appreciate its respect for the American military personnel who served during the Balkan conflict, but most viewers can wait until it hits iTunes on December 25^th (making the Yuletide bright). In the meantime, it opens this Friday (12/21) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Navy SEALs—Their Untold Story: from Frogmen to Seal Team Six

Although it mostly involved Army Rangers and Air Force support teams, four Navy SEALs also saw action during the Battle of Mogadishu—all four of whom would be awarded Silver Stars for their valor under fire. Perhaps you also heard it was a SEAL Team that dispatched bin Laden to a fiery eternity. With the first-time-ever support of the Naval Special Warfare Command, the history and service of the Navy’s commando force is chronicled in depth throughout Navy SEALs—Their Untold Story (promo here), which premieres on PBS this coming Veterans’ Day.

Conceived in conjunction with the companion volume co-written by former SEAL Dick Couch and co-producer William Doyle, the nearly two hour PBS special features a wealth of on-camera interviews with SEAL veterans who do not ordinarily do this sort of thing. They were there in the jungles of Viet Nam saving “Bat*21” and they have been all over Iraq and Afghanistan. Why would a division of the Navy be in a land-locked country such as the latter? They simply developed the expertise for covert missions.

Director-producer-writer Carol Fleisher takes a comprehensive approach, devoting considerable time to the SEALs’ WWII predecessors, the Naval Combat Demolition Units created by future Rear Admiral Draper Kauffman. For a while, they were generally known as just “Frogmen,” especially with the release of 1951’s The Frogmen, starring Richard Widmark, one of several touchstone films referenced in Untold. However, the SEALs were officially inaugurated during the early days of Viet Nam, to fulfill JFK’s prescient call for a flexible fighting force that would specialize in counter-guerilla insurgencies.

As viewers would expect, there are some extraordinary stories of courage in Untold. Frankly, it is amazing how often SEALs have successfully completed their missions, despite logistical snafus outside their control. Indeed, it is always respectful of the SEALs themselves. You would expect nothing less, especially since dedicated military supporter Gary Sinise serves as narrator. Strangely though, it seems to uncritically swallow most of the criticisms of the Iraq War, especially the highly debatable claim Saddam Hussein had no relationship with Al Qaeda whatsoever. Of course, it is on PBS, so apparently certain articles of faith must be respected.

Untold probably features more original interviews with Congressional Medal of Honor recipients than any other television program up until now. That alone makes it worth seeing. It is also a timely corrective to all the controversy surrounding the decision of the fateful former SEAL Team Six member to go public. Regardless of the current media firestorm, Untold reminds viewers of the SEALs peerless decades of resourcefulness and sacrifice. Recommended as appropriate viewing for Veterans’ Day, Navy SEALs—Their Untold Story airs on most PBS outlets this Tuesday (11/11).