User Reviews

Oh, man, I hated this movie. Granted, the site locations were great, but that's about the ONLY positive thing I can say about it. Now, I'm going to state right at the beginning that I am VERY critical of the way weapons, especially firearms, are both portrayed, and handled, in movies. Being a war flick, portrayal was fine, but the shoddy weapons handling in the movie would have NEVER been tolerated by a real SEAL Team. The acting was more wooden than my first sailboat, the equipment carried (or lack of it) was laughable, and the dialogue was, shall we say, lacking in ANYTHING interesting. Well, with the exception of the journalist, which was actually prescient. Watching this movie was comparable to watching "Palmetto" with Woody Harrelson, where each scene was so bad you just couldn't turn it off, because you had to see if they could get worse with the next scene. Like Palmetto, they certainly did. The scene in the water, where, after shooting the first of the enemy, they BLOW THE DAMN BOAT UP, thereby having to face possible drowning, made me laugh so hard, that for a millisecond, I almost thought it was worth waiting through the movie for. Then Charlie Sheen decided to drag the surviving enemy down to the depths of the ocean (the way it was filmed, with the many camera cuts, it looked like they went down about 80 feet. Nice continuity there....) before slashing his throat was so damn stupid, I was stunned. Then again, so was the whole damn movie. I enjoy action movies, but not this one. NOTE: The version I watched was a TV version, pan & scan. I can't imagine that made a difference, except for making the whole thing blessedly shorter!

you can't watch a commandos film and expect to see a godfather with SMG's. It's quite different to any other film of this kind; there are no nukes or chemical or bio weapons on this one: they chase simple stinger ground to air missiles, what any terrorist nowadays can have. Also there is no big explosion at the end or a pumped up villain or troopers, they're the average man, and their operations and equipment should be the one the real SEALs use. But i believe that Charlie Sheen's character is out of place, i really hated him from the beginning, and even more after he caused the big black guy's death. What a jerk! A court martial over there! He believes he can do anything he wants and nothing can stop him, also it was a very exaggerated perfomance by Sheen, i rather see him telling jokes than shooting arabs. A good film anyway for someone who needs a doses of testosterone, average than it's brothers.

I had a great time working as a background actor in the two Pentagon scenes. I got the chance to meet Michael Beihn; a very talented and giving actor. I am glad the producers and director decided to shoot on locations around Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Richmond,VA. Overall, the film was entertaining, exciting, thrilling and plain fun. It was good to see some of the characters, especially the one played by Charlie Sheen, learn a lesson in a way. I really enjoyed the directing, art-direction, photography, locations, story line, plot and character development along with performances. It was interesting to take a look back, and see some foreshadowing to the current events of today. You can see the frustrations the Navy Seals had regarding Naval intelligence. Very good film all around.

"Jewel of the Nile" director Lewis Teague's fast-paced military actioneer "Navy Seals" qualifies as an above-average, but half-baked exercise in male testosterone with Charlie Sheen, Michael Biehn, Rick Rossovich, Dennis Haysbert, and Bill Paxton as members of an elite unit that accept what are essentially suicide missions. These guys fight hard and play hard, but the odds whittle down their numbers by fade out. Lensed partially on location in Spain, this is one of those anti-Middle Eastern terrorist rants that pits our heroes against die-hard Arab fanatics who have acquired Stinger missiles. Teague keeps the action moving fast enough to satisfy the action junkies, but the Chuck Pfarrer & Gary Goldman screenplay, loosely based on former Seal Pfarrer's exploits, is thick on plot but thin on characterization. Sheen has more character to work with than his co-stars. He is an adrenaline junkie who would rampage into Hell with a bucket of ice-water before he realized how he had imperiled himself. Meanwhile, as Lieutenant Curran, Michael Biehn is the cool under fire cucumber who knows when to evacuate.

The film opens with a U.S. Navy helicopter crew trying to rescue personnel from a burning civilian ship. Unexpectedly, an enemy gunboat plies through the clouds of smoke and unleashes a hail of gunfire that kills two of the crew and riddles the tail rotor. Down goes the chopper and the terrorists take the crew hostage. In Norfolk, Virginia, Graham (Dennis Haysbert of "The Unit") is about to get hitched when his buddies and he receive an alert to report to work. His bride to be cannot believe that they are walking out on her before they can exchange their marital vows. The Seals show up in time to catch the Arabs just before they can kill all the hostages. They save the pilot and the badly beaten co-pilot, but Hawkins (Charlie Sheen of "Platoon") follows his instincts when he should be obeying Curran's orders. The team stumble onto a full-scale terrorist operation as the villains are about to move a shipment of deadly American-made Stinger missiles. These weapons are particularly lethal because they are not only portable but also hand-held. Suddenly, terrorists pour out of nowhere to attack the heroes. Curran decides to evacuate his men after the terrorists gun one down.

When they reach headquarters, the big wigs decide that Curran should have stuck around to destroy the Stingers. Eventually, when their own intelligence community cannot furnish them with answers about the whereabouts of the terrorists, Curran persuades a beautiful half-Lebanese journalist (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer of "Scandal") to help them.

The thing that dates "Navy Seals" the most is "Cobra" composer Sylvester Levay's 80's style music. John A. Alonzo's photography is an asset. Teague orchestrates the action so that it builds to a climax when our heroes invade Beirut to blow up the Stingers and Hawkins gets to redeem himself.

What looks like a fun boys-own adventure type film turns out to be a load of old rubbish. A prime example of why I hate these army-action movies, it's just a flashy yet shallow experience to watch as the cast of immaculate young men run around with guns and do some laughable male-bonding. Even the so-called "violent" action takes the form of a few minor missions which have some bad guys getting shot. The lack of a plot means that one meaningless scene merges into the next as all the genres try to get a slice of the action. Sadly, the action is disappointing (save for one cool chase towards the end), the romance is non-existent due to the horrible acting of Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, the comedy falls flat, and the human drama which is supposed to make us care for these macho losers is worthless.

What comes as most surprising is how an entire cast come off badly even when there are some (sometimes) good people involved. Of course, the characters are one-dimensional and clichéd - yet another black man is involved and predictably gets killed - but nobody even brings a little spark of interest in their performance. Charlie Sheen is annoying as the frisky hero who does amazing feats just to show off, i.e. jump from a moving car on a bridge into a river. Michael Biehn, who showed fine promise with his good performances in THE TERMINATOR and ALIENS, is totally flat here, simply an action-man figure to look at. Bill Paxton, nowadays something of an above-the-title name, wears a moustache and has about two lines of dialogue. Frequently boring, plot less, and a load of rubbish to boot, this is neither exciting nor thrilling and is thoroughly forgettable.