You write, “my primary concern is that the concept originated within the corporate NSW community, which means that it was started specifically to promote their agenda.”

Are you taking exception with the fact that Naval Special Warfare — as an institution — would see some kind of tactical advantage in the bureaucratic (i.e., budget) battle in cooperating with the film?

Or are you concerned more generally that, by shining a spotlight on NSW (and presumably glorifying it — not that it needs Hollywood for that) NSW will take pride of place in the Special Operations community, draining resources from Army or Air Force SOF?

I ask because you state you are *not* troubled by Defense Department cooperation with “obviously” fictional stories like “Transformers” or by DoD cooperation on “historical” pictures — the 3rd Special Forces Group, for example, provided extras and technical advice for the 1968 David L. Wolper production, “The Devil’s Brigade,” a picture about the First Special Service Force in Italy in 1943.

Something about the contemporary nature of “Act of Valor” and currently-serving SEALs would seem to be at issue for you. Is this an ethical objection?

In _Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies_ (Prometheus 2004), David L. Robb (a reporter for “Daily Variety”) discussed the involvement of VF-51 and the commands and crews of the U.S.S. Ranger and NAS Miramar in the production of “Top Gun.”

In an interview with “Mother Jones,” Robb objected to this practice because, “People are going off to war and getting killed, in part because of some movie that they saw that was adjusted by the military.” As proof, Robb claims that “Top Gun” boosted Navy recruiting inquiries by 500%.

Even if that were the case — he cites a recruiting command official but no raw data — we obviously don’t know what percentage of those inquiries became successfully closed recruiting contracts, nor do we (or can we) know what percent of those successful recruiting contracts would *not* have otherwise been recruits in the absence of the picture.

While “Mother Jones” was sympathetic to his objection, it was empirically baseless; all else being equal, one is just as likely to be inspired by a recruiting poster (as I was, of a jungle-fatigue-wearing Army Ranger in 1982) as by a movie.

I am increasingly interested in these kinds of cultural-strategic interactions, so if you could clarify the basis for your objection I’d be grateful.

Best regards,

Russell Burgos
International Institute, UCLA

I am glad to hear that the interrogation portion was handled with a higher level of realism. For all the (justifiable) attention placed on ‘enhanced interrogation,’ over the years, what you described sounds much closer to reality for the vast, vast majority of interrogations.