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Released by: Anchor Bay Entertainment
Released on: January 8, 2013.
Director: John Stockwell
Cast: Cam Gigandet, Anson Mount, Alvin 'Xzibit' Joiner, Kenneth Miller, Kathleen Robertson
Year: 2012
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THE MOVIE:
Look, let's just cut to the chase. If you have seen ZERO DARK THIRTY - hell, if you've read a plot synopsis of ZDT - you've seen SEAL TEAM SIX. In a vastly superior form. And I say that as someone who thought ZERO DARK THIRTY was one of the most overrated films in recent memory - a bloated, unfocused and often messy exercise hampered by one of the most wooden central performances to ever earn an Oscar nomination.
But enough about ZDT - let's talk about this TV movie made for National Geographic and first aired on Election Day 2012. Controversial for its use of a great deal of archival footage of president Obama making comments about killing Bin Laden and avoiding the more obvious moral ambiguity of ZDT, there is a bit of the Obama cheerleading squad feel to SEAL TEAM SIX. Thats not the main problem here however. By utilizing a combination of "after action" interviews with actors portraying the Seal members and politicos and intel officers working the hunt and staged reenactments the movie wanders all over the place. Most of us know the bare bones of the story and where the ultimate climax is headed. But maintaining an engaging narrative structure in the midst of this pea soup of archival footage and straight-on dead cam interviews and B-movie action scenes is very difficult. Some of the actual information is indeed fascinating like how Bin Laden was tracked through his courier and the lesser well-known Seal ops that were connected to this manhunt BEFORE the raid on the compound. The attempts to humanize the Seals with interviews are a bit hit and miss. Seeing some of these guys with their families certainly tugs a few heart strings, but seeing a lightweight actor like Cam Gigandet attempting to emote is pretty painful - this guy's main move is a perpetual squint.
SEAL TEAM SIX ultimately fails on a fish nor fowl level. It can't really compete as a serious film like ZERO DARK THIRTY or be a trashy balls-out DELTA FORCE style action romp "reenactment." Read a book on this, watch ZERO DARK THIRTY or wait for a more traditional non-fiction documentary on the op to kill Bin Laden. This one's a bust.
VIDEO/AUDIO/EXTRAS:
Considering its devils brew of source materials from news footage of Obama to HD camera sequences SEAL TEAM SIX's MPEG-4 AVC 1080p 1.85:1 transfer looks... okay. There is a persistent unreal look to the HD camera portions while some of the Afghanistan sequences look excellent. Some of the interview portions suffer from milky black levels and even a little aliasing. The film also has a generally muted color palette so there isn't much "pop" to the image. Detail is generally strong however.
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix here is strong with good use of surround channels which come into their own in the 2 big shoot out sequences in the film. No distortion or clipping in the sound field was noted.
Extras are comprised of a making-of featurette that clocks in at just under 18 minutes. It's of mild interest for fans of the film.
THE FINAL WORD:
Very much the weak sister of ZERO DARK THIRTY, SEAL TEAM SIX doesn't really have much to offer that cannot be seen or found elsewhere. Not recommended.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
