Just as we were basking in the sheer, unadulterated joy that was the 1980s through movies like Iron Eagle and The Lost Boys, along came St Elmo’s Fire to ruin it for everybody. So I needed a palette cleanser. Something to take the aftertaste of American angst away. Something so unspeakably 1980s awesome that even the 1980s couldn’t contain it, so it was released in 1990. Outposters, brace for action. It is time for Navy SEALS.
Remember:
“There’s no reason to thank us because we don’t exist. You never saw us. This never happened.”
Navy SEALs
Top Gun had lit up the box office like nothing else. After nearly a decade of maudlin introspection following defeat in Vietnam and the Iran hostage catastrophe, suddenly, militarism was cool again. America was getting its swagger back.
Guys were wearing military uniforms to bars to attract ladies. The Berlin Wall just came crashing down, and the Cold War is doing that awkward shuffle away like when you accidentally wave at someone who’s not waving back.
Studios asked the question: “What have we got that’s as cool as fighter pilots?” while audiences asked: “What would happen if you made Top Gun but took 100% of the latent homosexuality out of it?”.
Cannon Films had Delta Force all sewn up. Green Berets had been done. So the answer, in 1990, was the Navy SEALs.
The result is a movie that looks and feels like it was made in 1986, and secretly stored in a hyper-patriotic resin, only to be unleashed on the public because America had a few extra flags lying around.
Let’s get this out of the way first. When viewed as individual component parts, Navy SEALs is an awful film. However, when all those component parts are added together, something magical happens. When assembled, it becomes awesome!
What Navy SEALs ends up as is an explosive mixtape of Reagan-era bravado mixed with a dash of recruiting propaganda and a healthy splash of Hollywood cheese. It becomes wonderful, absurd, and more quotable than a drunken veteran at a 4th of July barbecue. More on that later.
The Plot… Such As It Is
You expected a plot? Oh, you sweet summer child. OK. This is the plot:
Some of those damned unreasonable and over-emotional sand-dwelling types have got their hands on some weapons, so now we have to go over there and kill them to death as quickly as possible. The end.
This is all you need to settle in and enjoy a movie starring men with square jaws, perfect hair, and access to weapons that go “boom” in the most patriotic way possible as they solve any issues by screaming, kicking down doors, blowing up everything in sight, and delivering snarky one-liners with zero emotional resonance.
Michael Biehn plays Lt. James Curran, the SEAL commander trying to juggle battlefield tactics with a relationship, which feels about as compatible as oil and a lighter.
Charlie Sheen is Lt. Dale Hawkins, the team’s hotshot adrenaline junkie whose idea of stealth involves at least one explosion and a quip. Then there’s “God,” the sniper played by Bill Paxton. Yes, they call the sniper God. That’s his call sign. This tells you all you need to know. That this film has subtlety like a chainsaw has finesse.
While Navy SEALs seems like something written 100% on Red Bull, or something much stronger, it actually had multiple writers and went through tons of rewrites. One of the early screenwriters reportedly wanted to make a gritty, realistic portrait of the SEALs, like Black Hawk Down, with less paperwork, but then Hollywood said:
“Nah, let’s have Charlie Sheen drive a Corvette through a war zone!”
Pre-Tiger Blood Warlock Sheen strikes poses, grimaces, and doesn’t bother his hair gel even in combat. He either kills people, or complains about the Navy telling him not to kill people. It’s like watching a living deodorant commercial in combat fatigues.
Biehn plays the exact same role he played in Aliens. Biehn actually wanted the role to give him more career variety. The universe, obviously, had other plans.
The movie was directed by Lewis Teague (The Jewel of the Nile), and it shows. Teague knew how to handle action but wasn’t afraid to let the cheese ooze out from the edges. He also had guidance from real-life Navy advisers, who, you can imagine sigh heavily every time a character in this movie fires an RPG from the hip.
Filming required cooperation from the U.S. military, and the Navy was on board because Navy SEALs is a two-hour recruitment poster with a soundtrack. The Navy got to show off their gear and tactics, and we got to watch bad guys get vaporized while Charlie Sheen skateboards through Beirut. This was just a magical time.
There is more America per minute in Navy SEALs than in Top Gun. This movie is so American that if you watch it while holding a Budweiser, it grows a mullet and starts singing “Proud to Be an American” by itself. Everything about it screams “USA,” from the flag-waving score to the clean-shaven, all-American men whose primary mission appears to be freedom-flavored destruction.
It’s a fantasy. A hyper-violent, jingoistic fantasy where the only thing better than being a Navy SEAL is being a Navy SEAL who can’t wait to tell you about being a Navy SEAL.
And you know what? It kind of rules.
Technical Achievements
It’s impossible to overstate how often things explode in this film. Cars explode. Buildings explode. Boats explode. A goat explodes off-screen, and we just weren’t shown because even the film’s editors thought “We may have gone too far with this one.”
The action beats are designed less for tactical accuracy and more for cool factor. Night vision goggles? Check. Helicopter insertions? Check. Underwater infiltration scenes? Of course. But quietly dismantling a terrorist network with intelligence gathering and patience? What are you, French?
The thing that really stuck in my mind on revisiting this movie is just how damn quoteable it all is, and I cannot figure out why nobody is still quoting it today.
“When the bell rings, we’re gone. We’re ghosts.”
“You do the killing. I’ll do the talking.”
“God’s firing!”
There are hard-boiled lines delivered like Hallmark cards dipped in motor oil. Most are unintentionally hilarious, and some are just quotes you’d expect from guys who’ve been awake for 48 hours and who think that bravery tastes like raw steak.
Though released in 1990, this movie feels like it was shot on film that Reagan personally touched. The music, the hair, the clothes, the pacing. Everything screams 1980s. This was one of the last pure action movies to exist before Hollywood discovered irony, and we all got smarter and therefore much more boring.
There’s a purity in the way Navy SEALs approaches action. It’s earnest, unflinching, and just self-aware enough to seem like it winks at the audience. It’s like a Michael Bay movie before Michael Bay knew what a pyrotechnic was.
If you’re here for art, you’ve made a mistake. Navy SEALs is not a great movie. It’s silly, occasionally nonsensical, and deeply committed to its own mythology. The characters have the depth of a puddle and the emotional complexity of a vending machine. The villain is so generic he might as well be called “Evil Terrorist #1.”
And yet… it’s awesome.
In the same way that Commando, Rambo II, and The Delta Force defiantly plant their flags on the hill of testosterone-fueled nonsense, Navy SEALs plays it straight. There’s something magical about that kind of bold sincerity. It’s an action movie that wants to be cool, and gosh darn it, it is cool even when it’s ridiculous.
Cheese In Camo
Navy SEALs is like a cheeseburger. Not healthy, not sophisticated, but you’re having a great time and you’ll really enjoy it.
If you love action films that don’t apologize for being over the top, this is for you. If you like watching elite soldiers banter as they blow up terrorist compounds while quoting Scripture and action clichés, then welcome home, patriot. And if you want a time capsule from an America that only existed in Hollywood backlots, this movie is a bright red, white, and blue postcard from that world.
Is it good? Arguably not. Is it great? Indisputably.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to watch Charlie Sheen drive a sports car off a cliff, because I believe in God damn freedom.
