Bullet Points: American Renegades
I always say that you can find a Navy SEAL in every truck stop in America. That isn’t because there are hundreds of thousands of them running around, it’s because people are liars and not even good ones at that. We can all agree that SEALs are bad as hell but let’s lay off from lying about being one and just appreciate them and all of their sweet action movies. Starting with this one….
Synopsis: A team of Navy SEALs discover a cache of Nazi gold under a lake in 1995 Sarajevo and attempt to recover it before the locals baddies can take it for themselves.
- Welcome to Sarajevo: I was really happy to see that this movie takes place in the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995. It seems like a totally random place to put the movie but only because most people watching it aren’t too familiar with the craziness of Eastern Europe in the 90’s. It ends up being the perfect setting for this tale as these SEALs are afforded the opportunity to be in the area where genocidal maniacs exist in a place with plenty of history.
- Nazi gold is the best gold: Using Nazi’s as a villain in your movie is the easiest way to gain sympathy for your purpose. They aren’t exactly the bad guys in this movie but their exploits during WW2 causes a whole bunch of French gold to end up on the bottom of a lake and allows us to have some fun watching it get recovered.
- J.K. Simmons is always good: I don’t have to tell you that J.K. Simmons is the man but American Renegades also makes use of guys like Sullivan Stapleton, Joshua Henry, and Charlie Bewley to get across the extent of the adventures of the SEAL team. I thought they all did a pretty good job of playing the part of operator even though I would have preferred they looked a little tougher. Simmons plays their commanding officer and mostly barks at them a few times during the film. They probably could have made use of him better but my guess was that he was only on scene for a handful of days.
- Flooded cities and Serbian titties: The SEAL team find themselves on a mission to recover the stolen gold at the bottom of the lake but it mainly began because the soldiers were trying their best to bed the lovely Lara (Sylvia Hoeks). The film feels like a late 80’s/early 90’s flick that should have had at least one strip club scene but there is no doubt that Hoeks is a beaut and could drive men to do such a thing.
- Logistics, bro: Too much of the movie is spent with the men planning the mission and not enough of them actually doing it. If your protagonists are gonna be badass Navy SEALs then you better give me multiple action scenes and a montage or two.
- Clean it up: The action scenes that are in American Renegades are exceptional. I thought the opening scene and the helicopter/jet bit in the middle were great. The major problem I have with the film is that they didn’t have more of them. If this were my movie then I would have slipped in a montage and made my villainous military guys a little worse than they appear on screen. Inserting a scene or two of them doing something terrible would have given me more reason to cheer for my SEALs instead of just waiting for them to accomplish their goal.
The Verdict: Man, oh man. I really wanted to like American Renegades from the beginning. The opening scenes grabbed me and got me interested but the film slowed to a grinding halt the more it went on and my interest levels dwindled at a rate I haven’t seen since that Star Trek reboot. Give me Navy SEALs and epic gun battles or don’t give me Navy SEALs at all. The movie started strong but struggled to bring it home. A weak villain and not enough action give me pause to fully endorse this movie. Let’s hope that director Steven Quale gets something a little more action-packed next time.
