Subscribe
Navy SEALs train on a high-altitude low-opening jump in "Act of Valor," now playing on overseas bases and stateside.

Navy SEALs train on a high-altitude low-opening jump in "Act of Valor," now playing on overseas bases and stateside. (Relativity Media)

Navy SEALs train on a high-altitude low-opening jump in "Act of Valor," now playing on overseas bases and stateside.

Navy SEALs train on a high-altitude low-opening jump in "Act of Valor," now playing on overseas bases and stateside. (Relativity Media)

A SEAL known as Senior Chief interrogates a detainee played by actor Alex Veadov in what the directors say was an unscripted scene.

A SEAL known as Senior Chief interrogates a detainee played by actor Alex Veadov in what the directors say was an unscripted scene. (Relativity Media)

The movie - Act of Valor - used live rounds while filming and stars active-duty Navy SEALs to achieve as realistic a look and feel of combat as possible.

The movie - Act of Valor - used live rounds while filming and stars active-duty Navy SEALs to achieve as realistic a look and feel of combat as possible. (Relativity Media)

Naval Special Warfare asked Hollywood for a feature-length recruiting video, and that’s exactly what it got in the new action flick “Act of Valor.” It’s like a movie version of an old-fashioned military propaganda poster: America in danger? The SEALs will save the day!

The Pentagon-Hollywood collaboration was born out of a mandate in 2006 for the Navy to recruit 500 new SEALs. To help with that challenge, the service commissioned a movie about the normally secretive community of special operators. The hope was for a film that would do for SEALs what “Top Gun” did for pilots.

But there are no big-name stars like Tom Cruise in “Act of Valor.” Instead eight active-duty SEALs are the lead “actors,” portraying themselves in a fictional plot.

In the movie, the SEALs bounce around the globe from one covert operation to the next to stop an elaborate terrorist plot by a Chechen jihadist. While the overarching narrative is a product of Hollywood imagination, the five main events in the movie are based on real SEAL exploits.

Convinced it would be easier to train a SEAL to act a little than to train an actor to be a SEAL, the filmmakers spent months persuading the Coronado, Calif.-based SEALs to be in the movie.

“At first we thought we’d cast actors, but as we spent time with [the SEALs] and got to see the complexity of their characters, we realized there was no way we would get it right if we don’t use the real guys,” co-director Scott Waugh said.

The film, however, never delves beyond the flash-bang veneer of a typical action flick to explore what it means to be the nation’s elite killers, the men called upon to do the work rarely spoken about. The movie is content with simply showing off the first-class, tactical acumen of the SEALs.

Because of the SEALs’ training and deployment schedules, “Act of Valor” took about two years to film with shoots lasting only a few days. The writer devised the plot around where the SEALs would be training: Chechnya, Philippines, Somalia, Mexico and others.

Absent is Afghanistan. The filmmakers said they wanted to focus on the global terrorism threat.

“I personally feel Americans have become a little complacent about that,” Waugh said.

The film bounces between one high-octane scene to the next, and the action, filmed with live rounds for authenticity, often takes on the vibe of a first-person-shooter video game with tight shots from a helmet camera.

The SEALs worked off a skeleton script, filling in the dialogue with what they would naturally say in a real-life situation. In one interrogation scene, a SEAL known in the film only as Senior Chief and easily the best actor of the bunch, brought his real-life techniques to the table in a scene almost entirely improvised.

The directors told Senior Chief what it was his character knew already and the information he needed to extract, but “how you get there is up to you,” Waugh said.

They called “action” and Senior Chief just stood outside not entering the scene while the actor playing the detainee sat in a chair waiting. For authenticity sake, the two had never met.

“So we’re rolling and rolling, and we’ve got limits on film, so finally after five minutes we’re like ‘cut!’ ” Waugh said. He went over asked Senior Chief what he was doing, “and he’s like ‘I just want him to sweat a little bit.’ ”

The Navy reviewed every angle shot, frame by frame, to ensure there weren’t any operational security concerns with what was being shown.

The filmmakers insist the service had no creative control over the movie, but they do say their goal was to still be drinking buddies with the SEALs after the movie came out.

It’s a great time for the release. The movie was No. 1 at the box office over its opening weekend, making $24.5 million stateside. Audiences loved the film, giving it an average grade of A, according to market research firm CinemaScore.

With the Osama bin Laden raid and the high-profile rescue of hostages in Somalia, the movie studio couldn’t have bought better marketing.

“We’ve gotten very lucky with what’s happened in the last year with the SEAL teams,” Waugh said.

Sign Up for Daily Headlines

Sign up to receive a daily email of today's top military news stories from Stars and Stripes and top news outlets from around the world.

Sign Up Now