Act of Valor's Hollywood sparkle is much more subtle than in, say, Charlie Sheen's 1990 blockbuster Navy Seals. The pizzaz added to the experience and made the film much more enjoyable without detracting from the realism. I didn't have to suspend my disbelief, much. At no point did the Hollywood touch made me laugh out loud at faked action or strategery.
That said, the storyline was terrible. I get that the action sequences were pulled from real SEAL missions and the storyline was thrown together to string one sequence into the next, but the number of cliche plot devices and tropes that were thrown in really had me worrying about the perils of patriotic plagiarism.
It was as if Act of Valor's producer took the most overused situations from every war movie made since the end of World War One, mixed them all together and hoped that they would pluck the heartstrings of the viewers. Strike the "as if." It was.
Husband leaving pregnant wife to defend his country? Check. Villain with a scar on his face? Check. Damsel in distress? Check. Continuing the mission despite mortal wounds? Check and check. All it was missing was a man strapped to a slab with a giant laser threatening to cut off his meaty bits.
In terms of acting, this can really be split into two sub-categories: acting with plot related dialogue and acting under fire.
When the SEALs are just standing around and talking to advance what little plot line there is you can tell that being the tree in their kindergarten play was probably the closest they had previously come to an acting career. Which is fine, seeing as they're probably the most awesome men ever to walk the battlefield, but on the big screen it can make some of the dialogue seem forced and unnatural.
Having grown up with movies like The Longest Day I'm used to my soldiers being a little more eloquent (Duke-esque, even), but you can tell that these guys are out of their element and even perhaps a tad uncomfortable.
But when the guns come out, everything changes.
The second these guys pick up a firearm you can see a massive spike in the level of intensity they are putting into their job. Just looking at their eyes you get the feeling like they're taking this as an opportunity not just to run around with guns but to train as well, putting their skills to work as if it were the real thing. The U.S. Navy even kept the original footage for use in training. This is something we've never seen in this kind of quality on film before, and quite frankly it was amazing.
That level of intensity they show might have something to do with the fact that they used live ammunition for much of the production.
