Hollywood Tries A New Battle Plan

John Jurgensen at the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting piece about how, after a string of anti-American, anti-military films failed at the box office, a new crop of pro-military films will soon be showing on TV and at the movies.

On a 2010 training exercise, a team of Navy SEALs converged on an ocean rendezvous point. Crouched beside the sailors on a bouncing Zodiac speedboat was a filmmaker, dressed in camouflage with his camera rolling as a submarine broke the surface. "We ran those boats right up on the back of that nuclear sub," said director Mike McCoy.

For years, war movies have centered on conflicted, disillusioned soldiers. John Jurgensen on Lunch Break looks at a new crop of films that aim to make a fictional drama with real-life Navy SEALs.

His team came to film the SEALs perform an underwater exit from the sub, then spent a week alongside its crew when rough seas dragged out the two-day shoot. For two years the filmmakers had inside access to the Navy's elite and secretive force for an unusual assignment: to create a feature film that starred real-life SEALs—not actors—in lead roles. The movie, "Act of Valor," is not a documentary. Instead, it straddles reality and fiction, military messaging and entertainment. It features strike scenes written by the SEALs themselves, jarring live-fire footage and a body count that would rival any '80s action flick. Yet the movie, to be released in February, was designed to set the record straight on a group that the military says has been routinely misrepresented in film.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576528293606172306.html

You can read an earlier post on the Navy SEALs film via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2011/06/act-of-valor-new-fictional-film-on.html

You can also read my interview with former Navy SEAL Dick Couch via the below links:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/DickCouchInterview1.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/DickCouchInterview2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/DickCouchInterview3.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/DickCouchInterview4.jpg