Navy Seals

The Navy Seals have gotten a lot of publicity over the last few years, most of it positive. Seal Team 6 led the assault that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden, and then saw their mission get a big screen treatment in Zero Dark Thirty. Just last year, Act of Valor was released in theaters, a great action movie starring real-life seals as themselves. Those are pretty good movies though. How about some oh so bad guilty pleasure flick? Enter stage right, 1990's Navy Seals.

Trying to rescue American pilots taken hostage by extremist terrorists, veteran Navy Seal Lt. James Curran (Michael Biehn) leads his Seal team into a heavily guarded terrorist hideout and executes the mission. During the mission though, his right hand man, Lt. Dale Hawkins (Charlie Sheen), discovers a warehouse full of Stinger missiles, accurate handheld American surface-to-air missiles. Under heavy fire though, the Seals can't destroy the missiles and must leave for their extract point. The missiles remain a high objective though, but the trail goes cold except for a link to an unknown terrorist, Ben Shaheed (Nicholas Kadi). Curran follows a lead in a Lebanese journalist (Joanne Whalley) who has ties and sources in the Middle East. Can they find Ben Shaheed, his extremist followers and their extremely dangerous missiles before they're put into use?

Released in 1990, 'Seals' barely recouped its budget, making about $25 million before finding popularity on home video. It was almost universally panned by critics and is currently rocking a sterling 5.2 IMDB rating. So why then do I like it so much? The only real response I can come up with is that it's a bad movie, and it embraces the badness. The complaints are ridiculous. Sheen and Biehn's hair doesn't fly with Navy regulation. The script is pretty lousy, relying on cliches and stereotypes with just about each passing scene. The one-liners are beyond goofy. Not one of those complaints is unfair in the least. They're all quite legit. It's a pretty stupid movie, and you know what? It's the better for it. 'Seals' tries to entertain, and it never lets us down as an audience in that way.

Part of the fun comes from the casting. An underrated star of the 1980s, Biehn is all business, no nonsense as Lt. Curran, the tough as nails Seal team leader. His second-in-command is Sheen's Lt. Hawkins, a crazy thrill seeker who pushes it too far at times in getting his "rush" on. There's a solid, enjoyable dynamic between the two as they butt heads over how to get things done. Curran's team includes Leary (Rick Rossovich, another 80s icon in Top Gun), the corpsman, Rexer (Cyril O'Reilly), explosives, Dane (Bill Paxton), the sniper, Graham (Dennis Haysbert), the team chief, and Ramos (Paul Sanchez), the interpreter. The only real development any of them are given is Graham getting a fiance story (a pre-Law and Order S. Epatha Merkerson), but that's beyond the point. This is a men-on-a-mission movie at its best (and worst I suppose).

At its heart, this is an action movie pure and simple. A movie running 113-minutes never goes too long without some shootouts and pyrotechnics. The opening raid on the terrorist port hideout is a great scene-setter for what's to come. In an episodic story that has the Seals moving from location to location, we never stay in one place more than a few minutes. Mission after mission, some quick and hard-hitting, others a little more drawn out and allowed to breathe. The finale when Curran's team tracks down the Stinger missiles is not surprisingly the best. The Seals must fight their way through the bombed-out, war-torn streets of Beirut in Lebanon in the night. It's a tense scene with a more than solid payoff as the surviving Seals (Yes, there are casualties) race through the streets with heavily armed terrorists behind them in hot pursuit. Sure, the action is a tad overdone at times, but it's fun stuff.

This is a dudes being dudes movie. You don't go into it for the dialogue scenes between Biehn's Curran and Whalley's comely journalist. You go into it for the action and ridiculousness in director Lewis Teague's shootout-heavy flick. Where else can you see a goofy 1980s-esque montage with the Seals goofing around on a golf course to an awful cover of the Boys Are Back in Town? Cheesy soundtrack in general in a movie that won't strain any brain cells. An introduction has Sheen's Hawkins jumping off a bridge out of a moving jeep to avoid going to a fellow Seal's wedding. How stupidly over the top is that? But that's the movie. Entertaining at times in spite of itself, it's a movie released in 1990 that might as well be considered as a schlocky 1980s flick. Whatever and whenever it was released, it's a good one that's oh so bad.   

Navy Seals (1990): ***/****