Parents' Guide to Paskal

For better or worse, this film is reminiscent of the American war movies that were big when Ronald Reagan was president. Heroism, bravery, and valor win the day, but so do endless firefights, jingoistic machismo, and headbutts. There's a story happening between the action sequences, but it's so stock and trite, it's easy to pay more attention to the lengthy battles between the Special Forces and the ragtag evil pirates. An underlying theme is supposed to be about what the characters are faced with as individuals who choose to undergo the expected grueling training and the subsequent negative effect on their homelives, but it's hard to feel much emotional attachment when, for instance, one of the Special Forces operatives only stands out from the others because he is "a reader" -- he wears glasses and is shown reading a dogeared paperback of Pensées by (wait for it) Pascal. The other secondary characters are also cut from a similar "stock."

Nonetheless, for fans of the action/war genre, there are plenty of entertaining scenes, exciting chases, and interesting uses of military hardware. There's a clear attempt at a deeper meaning, but like most action movies, the themes in Paskal are easily lost in the turbulence of battle. The result is derivative bombast and worn out clichés.