Please. There is NOTHING realistic about the way Hollywood movies portray military tactics, especially special operations. The biggest mistake, in my opinion, comes from necessity rather than stupidity or laziness. And nowhere was this more evident than the movie "Act of Valor". In the scene where we see the SEAL team moving through the brush...you wouldn't actually SEE the SEAL team moving through the brush. And if you accidentally did manage to get a glimpse of them it wouldn't look like that. In fact, it would look so little like anything you've ever seen in your life that you'd dismiss it as an illusion without even realizing you did. But that wouldn't photograph well and people wouldn't believe it.

People have to keep in mind what type of audience these Hollywood action movies are made for. They are made for the MAINSTREAM audience so it means that the great majority of viewers don't care if the action is unrealistic or they don't even notice that it is unrealistic.

Another frequent misconception is that Commandos are mistaken for super soldiers, which they are not. Better than average, yes, but still from this world. The difference is that they are usually very, very, very well prepared and carefully select time and conditions to have surprise on their side. If everything works out as planned it may appear miraculous, but people forget that commando missions can just as well go horribly wrong, and if they fail, they usually fail big time.

Correct, Ssnake. NOT Super Soldiers. But better than average? I wouldn't say that. I was one and I don't consider myself better.

Better trained, definitely. More intense training. Training that's more specialized and broader at the same time. We all were expected to know everything about every aspect of any mission we could get, from pack mule to mission leader. One of my OICs actually pulled the mission leader out in the middle of an exercise a couple times just to see how well we adapted.

More dedicated to success than most, maybe. Or at least with a higher percentage of people in the unit with that level of dedication, because the training is very good at weeding out those without it. The instructors push you harder. They want the weak to quit. I don't remember any of the "All you have to do is ring that bell and all your pain is over" crap. But they definitely made it clear that you if you weren't absolutely dedicated to doing whatever you had to, enduring whatever discomfort they dished out (and they did, and they were good at it) to stay...to finish...to succeed...that, as Perry Cox said in an episode of Scrubs, they'd kick your @ss out the door in one second and forget you ever existed the next.

Maybe a more accurate term would be more confident. Most people who were in the military are more self-confident than most people who weren't because they've been forced into situations that ultimately prove they're more capable than they thought possible. And the more difficult the obstacles that you've overcome are, the more confident you are in your ability to overcome any obstacle and the more willing you are to take on those that seem insurmountable. And that's why the instructors push so hard. Not to make you quit, per se, but to make sure that if you're the type who will quit you do it there.

Oh, and we got to play with better toys. Way better toys.

Legit special forces tactic in action:




And that's only one of the basics. They train for this, maaaaaaan!

Oh, yeah, Blast. We did that all the time. I especially liked his face camo. VERRRRY authentic.

Seriously, though, I had one instructor who was a whiz at throwing knives. Hand him a knife and he could stick it within a couple of throws.Including pocket knives. And he LOVED to show it off.

So his favorite military movie is "Heartbreak Ridge." That by itself makes me want to watch it again. It reminds of the time I was in Mobile Bay, Alabama touring the USS Drum. The tour guides were actually former crew members of the Drum and I just had to ask which military movie about WW2 submarines (submersibles) they thought was the most realistic and without hesitation, they said "Das Boot."

Quite honestly, nothing else comes close.


For modern era submarine warfare is there anything that comes close to HFRO? I can't think of any movie at all.

On the subject of realism and military movies, I just want to share a little anecdote. My dad is a Vietnam veteran and he had this to say about the movies "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket." He thought Full Metal Jacket was "bullsh*t." While the basic training scenes in Full Metal Jacket are very authentic, my dad was disappointed by the stylized depictions of battle where director Kubrick was trying to recreate the feel of the novel "The Short Timers." However, my dad will swear that the scenes in "Platoon" where they are getting stoned on weed were ultra-realistic! It just goes to show that there are aspects of war that don't often get covered in movies which are actually an integral part of a soldier's memory.

I talked to an ex-Navy man who served on cold war era US submarines and claimed that the overall "feel" of life on a boat such as the Los Angeles class submarine was realistically portrayed in "The Hunt for Red October."

A HUGE difference between Platoon and FMJ is that Oliver Stone was himself a Vietnam vet and several of the scenes in his film are based on his personal war experience.

Good point! It makes me wonder what Oliver Stone experienced and infused in the movie that made my dad hone in on that scene where they were getting stoned? My dad swears that weed made him super alert when he was point guard, or as he put it, he could "hear a mouse fart."

Was only ever a VERY rare and casual user myself, and that long ago and I don't remember it ever being the case with me, but I've heard that smoking pot makes you paranoid. Maybe that heightened his senses. Or maybe the heightened senses are what causes the paranoia. Which is cause and which effect, my guess is there's a correlation.

Yeah Kubrick was a fantastic director and while he aimed for realism in his films, he was an artist first. I will say though that Full Metal Jacket did a great job helping one feel how horrible war is--how it isn't all guts and glory and there are people behind the bullets... on both sides. It wasn't your stereotypical 80s "gooksmash." (this term is not meant in a derogatory racist fashion but instead is coherent with the time period for which it refers and there is no better term that can be used).

There was plenty of social commentary in FMJ. Take the door gunner--killing innocents, men, women and children, where he just "lead them more," while comical to someone lacking empathy, was also revealing how detached one could become when possessing a firearm. Truth be told I've heard many times a commanding officer has a hard time getting his guys to fire and kill because most don't want blood of another human on their own hands.


Likewise, the village burning scene in Platoon I felt conveyed a terrifyingly foreboding feeling of the innocents that were casualties of conflict. Downright horrifying.

Again, from a theatrical standpoint, realism is often based on what the audience will perceive as realistic. If the SEALs in "Act of Valor" moved the way they're trained to move the director might just as well foregone having them on the set and simply told the cameraman (excuse me cinematographer) to film an empty field. The audience wouldn't believe it possible to be that unseeable, but trust me, it is. I did a community theater production of "Wait Until Dark". The lady who played the blind star went to the Anchorage Braille Institute and worked with blind people so her portrayal would be authentic. First rehearsal, she's looking directly at the people she's talking with. The director stopped us and said, "Don't look right at him." She said, "But that's what blind people do." He said, "I know. But if you do that no one in the audience will believe you're blind."

That makes a lot of sense, vonBaur.

Hence all the gasoline explosions of the 80s...

And the cars that blew up when they rolled down a hill or were in a wreck. Hell, it became so cliche that if a car rolled over if it did not explode, the audience would shout BS. Like shooting a gas tank. Or the window of an airplane--I blame Goldfinger on convincing us if a window was shot someone would be squeezed out like a prune due to the pressure loss. They won't... but folks still believe they would.

He dismisses as unrealistic the incident with Red Buttons portraying the para being caught up on the St. Mere Eglise Church tower in the 'Longest Day'. That actually happened I believe.

wrong, he dismissed how it was portrayed, he said it would be more violent then the bumping they shown against the wall Also how unrealistic it would be to try to cut the rope when all you need to do is pull the extra chute.

If you're too close to the window when it blows out it's possible. You may remember the incident involving the Southwest Airlines jet nearly two years ago. And wasn't someone lost when that Hawiian Air jet "blew it's top"? But if the hole is big enough to generate that kind of force it will only last for a few seconds. The one that REALLY got that wrong (or maybe, got that REALLY wrong) is 1970's "Airport". The violent decompression takes something like a minute. But you're right, "Goldfinger" was pretty bad, too.