Blu-ray Review: Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden

Blu-ray Reviews, Reviews

If you can’t wait to see Zero Dark Thirty and need your fix of Navy SEALs on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden is something that’ll appeal for the DTV crowd willing to take a chance on a blind buy but ultimately leave anyone watching with a sense of time wasted.

Seal Team Six debuted on National Geographic this fall because it’s about as appropriate a venue for the film’s remarkably bad production values. The film follows the famed Navy SEALs team that took down Bin Laden on their fateful mission to the Pakistani compound where the Al Quaeda leader met his end. Led by a group of SEALs not given much in terms of character or story, the film follows that fateful night when Bin Laden was killed in the middle of the night.

The problem is that the film doesn’t really feel like anything but a rushed attempt to cash in on both the 2012 reelection campaign of the man who ordered the raid (President Obama) and an attempt at squeezing dollars out of people who can’t wait for the better retelling in Zero Dark Thirty.

Otherwise it’s a generic low budget thriller that even someone like Roger Corman could’ve made to look a bit better. It’s the thing that stands out about the film the most; it looks amateurish at best. It’s a shame because everyone associated with it is known for doing better work with similar low budget fair. John Stockwell managed to take lumps of stone like Jessica Alba and Paul Walker, fashion them in a tropical location and at least get the visually stimulating Into the Blue.

This is just nothing more than just a cheap cash-in on a historical event, emphasis on cheap, with little to offer beyond wasting 90 minutes of your life you won’t get back. The film, which feels padded at 90 minutes, doesn’t have anything of note outside of the perfunctory bad history lesson on an important historical moment of the past decade.

A generic making of piece is attached and that’s it for extras.

Anchor Bay presents Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden. Directed by John Stockwell. Written by Kendall Lampkin. Starring Cam Gigandet, Xzibit, Freddy Rodriguez, Anson Mount. Running time: 90 minutes. Not Rated. Released: January 8, 2013 . Available at Amazon.com.