This past Sunday, I decided that it was time I saw a Superbowl. I don't know positions and I don't know players, but I live in New England, so I knew what team I needed to cheer. The other thing I had heard about was the sheer enjoyability of the commercials.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I was bound to be biased. After all, earlier that day, I had watched completely too many bits by Bill Hicks, specifically this one. It did make me think about the teetering relationship between art and marketing, where money so often trumps personal beliefs. That idea started to germinate as the tapestry of high-def cars and beers unraveled from the screen.

Yet one trailer stood out in particular.

Act of Valor: Recruitment at its Finest

This 32-second clip left me reeling. Despite my instinct to dismiss Act of Valor as a cheesy, vaguely topical war movie, it seemed different. Sure, okay, the first three, unwaveringly predictable values bubbled into existence: FAMILY, HONOR, FREEDOM. A fairly easy trio to guess, although I probably would have said DUTY to spice things up. But then, out of nowhere, crammed into the screen, was a full-on sentence fragment: STARRING ACTIVE DUTY NAVY SEALS.

 Whoa, I thought. Active duty Navy SEALs? How are they on duty if they're in a movie, too? More importantly, is this a noble way to pay tribute to the sacrifices and successes of the SEALs or is it a dishonest and disgusting way to capitalize on those sacrifices and successes?

Like any sane person would, I immediately Wikipedia'd the movie. First, the synopsis comforted me, a little: “A Navy SEAL squad goes on a covert operation to rescue a kidnapped CIA officer, while also taking down terrorists who aim to strike America.”

Cheesy war movie, I concluded.

Oh, but then there was this:

“Act of Valor began as a recruitment video for the U.S. Military's Naval Special Warfare Command. In 2007, Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh of Bandito Brothers Production filmed a video for the Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen SWCC which led the Navy to allow them to use SEALs for Act of Valor. None of the SEALs' names will appear in the credits of the film. Relativity Media acquired the rights to the project on June 12, 2011 for $13 million and a $30 million in prints and advertising commitment. Deadline.com called it "the biggest money paid for a finished film with an unknown cast".

June 12, 2011. Wow, what an honorable investment by Relativity Media, just a month after Osama Bin Laden's death. What a freaking coincidence.

 Note: Bandito Brothers had completed the rough film in March.

The Kicker(s)

1)      The writer of Act of Valor is Kurt Johnstad, one of the three writers (I guess there was one per line of memorable dialogue) of 300, which attracted an immense amount of attention, mostly for its portrayal of Persian warriors.

“Like many of the battle pictures that came from Hollywood during World War II, 300 can be seen as simple propaganda, demonizing an alien enemy,” movie critic Stephen Rea wrote at the time. Othering Muslims seems to have been original creator Frank Miller's intent all along.

I'll be very interested to see whether Johnstad takes his expertise for writing a historically inaccurate and simplistic representation of a complicated conflict and applies it to Act of Valor, too. According to The Wall Street Journal, the plot revolves around a “Chechen jihadist cooperating with a smuggler to send suicide bombers across the Mexican border” to the U.S. “A villain from Eastern Europe was a less obvious and potentially sensitive choice than an Arab, the filmmakers say.”

Oh, really?

 2)      The producer-directors, Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh, have impressive portfolios of car ads and Mountain Dew commercials. In fact, their film studio, Bandito Brothers, seems more geared toward advertisements & recruitment videos than movies.

In fact, Scott Waugh helped direct “Operation Gridiron,” a viral mini-series promoting a video game by blending real-life military training with sports and video games. By pairing players of Battlefield 3 with professional athletes in different missions. And yes, they were being trained by... Navy SEALs.

No, seriously. The videos have already received positive support from some veterans, with one YouTube user claiming to be a vet posting, “This show [is] as fake lame ass as it gets... kids who play video games can't take their BF3 knowledge to the real battlefield. I'm really sickened that this bs even exists.”

3)     Battlefield 3 players who watched an Act of Valor trailer in November 2011 were awarded five downloadable dog tags for their account. Dog tags.

4)     The soundtrack to the trailer, Eminem's “Not Afraid,” is about recovering from drug addiction, but is being used in this context to promote a pro-military recruiting video.

5)      In January, billionaire Ronald Burkle, known for company take-overs, invested “$800 million or more” into distributor Relativity Studios. In addition to being on the board of directors for Occidental Petroleum Corporation for nearly ten years before leaving in 2010, Burkle donates heavily to the Democratic Party, to the tune of over $1 million to date.

 Note: This may not be relevant, seeing as how he is in control of Relativity Media, not Banditio Brothers, but I thought it was interesting. 

Propaganda v. War Movie

There is a case to be made for war movies... if they're historically accurate and thought-provoking. RedState.com's Jeff Emanuel tried to make this case for Act of Valor, but overlooked some deeper points.

Particularly in regards to this Wall Street Journal article, which reeks of a preemptive effort to mollify people who cringe at the sheer opportunism on display here.

“Now that deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq are tapering down, filmmakers are homing in on the more clear-cut job of battling terrorists,” journalist John Jurgensen reassures readers. In fact, he wagers that audiences don't like movies that play with their emotions and offer flawed characters when those characters are at war, pointing to the dismal box office performances of films like Stop-Loss.

We enter dangerous territory when we gloss over the reasons that we go to war. 300 caused some controversy to the most painfully politically correct of us, but it was, in the end, just an anachronistic analogy.

Act of Valor is coming out less than a year after Navy SEALs assassinated Osama Bin Laden. When you are filming a two-dimensional, evil vs. good war movie about a current conflict, that's not really a war movie. It's propaganda. Especially if you're literally blasting every possible marketing channel with it.

When you make a feature film about a recruiting video to glorify soldiers whose entire lives are dedicated to anonymity, service, and sacrifice, you're marginalizing the real and complex people upon whose lives it is based. Particularly when your entire marketing message is STARRING ACTIVE DUTY NAVY SEALS. 

Not only that, you're marginalizing the conflict itself.  

Drumming support for the troops is one thing, but drumming support for war is another. Not only that, the gung-ho attitude makes it that much harder to confront discordant realities: like the fact that one in six soldiers who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq have been diagnosed with PTSD.

That means war movies without deep conflict aren't just big-budget recruiting videos, they're dishonest. But maybe video games have gone past those boundaries a long time ago. 

Maybe if Relativity Studios (what an ironic name) donates the millions it makes to veteran charities, then I'll change my mind. Maybe if we see the uncertainty, the anxiety, and the shades of gray that are prevalent through so many soldiers' tours played out through the movie, I might find my way to the theater.

But, with a name like Act of Valor, I'm not holding my breath. And this review, with lines like, “the movie demonstrates that there is evil in this world and we do need men like this to protect us,” doesn't make the film seem too promising, either.