Navy Seals

Navy Seals stands out among this summer's violence-oriented pictures as the only one that doesn't leave your brain feeling like mashed potatoes. There are plenty of exploding bombs in this picture, not to mention various other forms of destruction...But the action is orchestrated so sensitively that it's both aesthetically satisfying and emotionally resonant. There's a texture to the violence in Navy Seals that's completely absent in this summer's kaboom cartoons.

Navy Seals is all action, no talk, and it never slows down enough to let you see how dumb it is. But the sudden lack of enemies in a world gone crazily, treacherously peaceful is a problem for Hollywood. [20 July 1990, p.G5]

It would be unfair to say the one-liner-loaded script sounds as if it were ripped from a comic book. It sounds as if it were ripped from a coloring book. Still, filmed and edited like a two-hour "Not just a job" ad and loaded with high-tech weaponry, secret code words, neat stunts and nearly nonstop blowups, blood and guts, Navy SEALs is an effective, adrenaline-injecting summer action flick that will leave you clenching your teeth and hating The Enemy in spite of yourself. Like a real Navy SEAL, it does what it's supposed to do and gets out of there quickly, and doesn't remain in your memory for long.

A very pompous version of the kind of nonsense Chuck Norris has been doing in far less embarrassing fashion for so many years.

But the movie falls flat with pat situations and predictable action sequences. And in this the summer of mega-action hits, a filmmaker has to devise something different and totally brash to woo audiences...The dialogue suffers from terminal silliness. [19 July 1990]

The SEALs remain as elusive in the movie as they are in real life. They don't offer much information about the secret force, nor do they show us what it's like to be in it. The script sounds as if it has been declassified with all the juicy stuff taken out for security reasons...What it's left with is a series of explosive action scenes, music videos and scant dialogue tied loosely together around a weak plot. [20 July 1990, p.6]

Navy SEALs isn’t just the most stupidly didactic action movie since The Green Berets. It’s the dullest action movie since The Green Berets.