Conor McCormack

Professors Bowers
Review essay
English 1101
5 November 2015

Act of Valor Review

Before my father died, he said that the worst part about growing old is that men stop
seeing you as dangerous. Ive always remembered that. That being dangerous was sacred, a
badge of honor. You live your life by a code, an ethos- every man does. Its your shoreline. Its
what guides you home, and trust me, you are always trying to get home. This is the opening
scene to the amazing movie Act of Valor. This film is about the elite group of the Navy. They are
called the Navy SEALS. SEALS is an acronym- it stands for sea, air, and land specialist. The
SEALS just recently came into the spot light with several films, like Lone Survivor and Zero
Dark Thirty. But the main differences in those two films compared to Act of Valor are the acting
and the message in Act of Valor, which is courage. To give you an idea about how hard Navy
SEAL training is, when Marcus Luttrell (the guy who Lone Survivor is based off of) went
through seal training, he started in a class of 164 soldiers and on graduation day, only 10 soldiers
remained. I did the math- that is 93.9 percent fail rate.
During the trailer, they say that, this film was based on real acts of valor, the story is
fictional, but the weapons and tactics are real. The movie starts out with the protagonist writing
a letter to his best friends family. The next scene is the SEAL team doing a practice dive over
San Diego, California. The movie continues with a terrorist attack in the Philippines, where our

ambassador was killed. That leads the SEAL team to investigate a guy by the name of Christo,
who is a Russian drug smuggler. Christo found out that the CIA was keeping an eye on him so
his men abducted the CIA agent who was spying on him and his organization. It was the job of
the SEAL team to go in and rescue her. They found out that this mission was going to take a
while when they stumble across a cell phone. After several other missions, they find themselves
in Mexico, right on the boarder of the US. Their mission here is to stop several suicide bombers
with the help of the Mexican Special Forces. These suicide bombers are trying to get to the US.
It is up to the SEALS and the Mexican Special Forces to stop them. Will they stop them from
getting into America or will they fail? You must watch to find out.
One thing that separates these movies is that in Act of Valor the people who are playing
the Navy SEALS are actually Navy SEALS. In all the other movies, they use actors and
stuntmen. In Act of Valor, they actually use active duty Navy SEALS. These SEALS were used
in this movie and are they the best actors? No, they are not but it makes it more realistic. Even
the stunts were performed by the SEALS. There is something about using real Navy SEALs that
makes this movie seem more realistic even though it is fiction.
I feel that this movie is more realistic than Lone Survivor and Zero Dark Thirty because
in Act of Valor, they used live rounds and ammo and the explosions are real in this movie while
in most war movies, they use fake rounds. So when you see the car being shot, thats not
Hollywood, that is actually the car being blown up.
The ending of this film is really powerful and moving. At the end of the movie, you get
the rest of the letter. Your father was a good man, growing up without him is going to be hard.
Its gonna hurt. Youll feel alone, out to sea with no shore in sight. Youll wonder why me, why
him. Remember you have warriors blood in your veins. The color that made your father who he

was is the same color that will make you a man that he would admire, respect. Put your pain in a
box, lock it down like the people in the paintings that your father liked. We are men made from
boxes. Chambers of loss and triumph, of hurt and hope and love. No one is stronger or more
dangerous than a man who can harness his emotions, his past. Use it as fuel, as ammunition, as
ink to write the most important letter of your life. The letter continues, but what is happening
before and during this part of the letter will bring a tear to your eye. Then you make it to the
credits, but instead of listing the people who created this film, it shows you will see a list of all
the Special Forces members that were lost during the war.
This movie is one of my favorite movies. I make it a point to watch it every few month to
remind me what these SEALS go through on a daily basis. I strongly recommend this movie to
everyone- not just one group but everyone, because anyone can take the message of this film and
put it in their life even if you dont serve in the military.