http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2012/02/29/act-of-valor-or-a-war-without-a-narrative/
… but with a Chechen-Jewish Drug Smuggler Named Christo
“Hezbollah is all over Latin America; Hamas is showing up there; Iran’s paramilitary Qods force is reported to be operating out of Venezuela; Hezbollah and Somali Islamists have already sneaked illegally across our border from Mexico; the great majority of drug criminals in Latin America are Latin American – yet the production team for Act of Valor decided to make the villains in the movie Chechens, and make the Chechen drug smuggler a Jew. Why in the name of Jumping Jehoshaphat did they do that?”
Let me state up front that I don’t think the filmmakers meant anything by the “Christo” character. I do think they stumbled haplessly on a hornet’s nest of anti-Semitic tropes – and thereby hangs a tale that matters.
Act of Valor is a moving, gripping film, all the more so for being enacted by real Navy SEALs. (Full disclosure: this reviewer is a 20-year Navy veteran, and while definitely not a SEAL was privileged to work with some.) The one major flaw I found with the production, per se, was the rather annoying sound track, which could have dispensed with the hackneyed crescendos at suspenseful moments. What the SEALs do needs no audience-cues or embellishment.
And they do incredible things. The movie conveys well the deceptive simplicity of their narrowly-scoped tactical operations. Naval Special Warfare is the unique funnel through which attack submarines, amphibious assault ships, and special-purpose aircraft are brought to bear on strange, one-off combat problems for which they weren’t necessarily designed. The whole Navy – indeed, all the special ops capabilities the United States has – makes up a big bag of tricks for the SEALs to reach into.