Callan Mulvey, Chase Stokes, Daniel Jun, Desmin Borges, Jerina Son, Jonathan Whitesell, Michael Cha, movies, reviews, Steve Barnett, Valiant One
February 4, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Steve Barnett
Culture Representation: Taking place in North Korea and in South Korea, the action film “Valiant One” features a white cast and Asian of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: After their helicopter crashes in North Korea, members of the U.S. Army are trapped in a forest area and try to evade capture and murder from North Korean opponents.
Culture Audience: “Valiant One” will appeal mainly to people who don’t mind watching predictable military action movies.
“Valiant One” is a clumsily constructed action flick about U.S. Army members who are stuck in a jungle with North Korean opponents. All of the characters have cardboard-like personalities. The Army characters’ bad decisions are more valueless than valiant.
Directed by Steve Barnett (who co-wrote the “Valiant One” screenplay with Eric Tipton), “Valiant One” is supposedly “inspired by true events,” according to a caption shown in the movie’s opening scene. However, the movie never reveals who is the basis of this story. “Valiant One” is really just a checklist of all the clichés you might expect from this type of filmmaking, which has no style or creativity.
The characters in “Valiant One” are either generic or annoying. By the end of the movie, hardly anything meaningful is revealed about the main characters. There are some video games that have better character development and more exciting action than the formulaic tripe that’s in this middling movie.
You know you’re in for a hokey mess when this introductory caption is shown on screen: “Heroes Aren’t Born. They Are Made.” At this point, you almost expect a U.S. military advertisment to play but this entire movie is set up to be almost like a recruitment ad for the U.S. military. But it’s an “ad” that won’t get much consumer confidence if these bozo characters are supposed to be “the best” that the Army has to offer.
“Valiant One” begins at a U.S. Army base called Camp Humpheys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. That’s where Edward Brockman (played by Chase Stokes), a sergeant, has been put temporarily in charge of a military unit after another supervisor named Sergeant Godina calls in sick. The military unit is traveling by helicopter into a heavily wooded demilitarized zone, near the border of North Korea, to repair a radar unit that tracks underground
A subordinate named Corporal Stephanie Selby (played by Lana Condor) seems annoyed that Edward is the leader. She comments sullenly on Edward’s unevenly buttoned camoflauge shirt: “Look, you may outrank me, but the least you can do is button your blouse correctly.”
It’s unclear why Stephanie has such an attitude with Edward. And it’s never made clear because this movie has no interest in telling viewers who these main characters really are. These characters just move around and talk in the movie as if they’re in a basic video game.
And the dialogue sounds like it was written by a cheap artificial intelligence program. In a locker room, U.S. Army soldier Jonah Ross (played by Jonathan Whitesell) looks admiringly at the assault rifle that he’s holding and quotes from “The Wizard of Oz” movie: “I got a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.” Sitting next to him is fellow soldier Wilson Lee (played by Daniel Jun), who says sarcastically, “Okay, calm down, Dorothy.”
Edward is a tech specialist who says out loud in the room that his dream job is to be on easy security duty for any rich defense contractor in California’s Silicon Valley. Suddenly, a civilian stranger shows up in the room and introduces himself as Joshua Weaver (played by Desmin Borges), a systems analyst who has been hired to accompany them on this trip, which is only supposed to take a few hours.
Joshua is about 10 to 15 years older than the 20-somethings in the room. He’s immediately rude and condescending to Edward because Joshua thinks he knows more than anyone else how to do this radar repair. He also sneers when he says that Edward “wouldn’t last a week in Silicon Valley.”
Edward and his unit are being accompanied by some older and more experienced Army officals. Why does it take all these Army officals just to repair one radar unit? Don’t expect the movie to answer that question.
All these extra nameless characters are only there to make it look more tragic when the large military helicopter crashes during a sudden rainstorm and not everyone makes it out alive. This helicopter crash looks utterly fake because it just shows the helicopter shaking and then the screen fades to black. The crash survivors then gain consciousness and see the complete wreckage of the helicopter.
Not long after the crash, Edward finds out that they have actually crashed over the border into North Korea. And forget about the U.S. military helping. Edward and the survivors quickly understand that they are on their own because the U.S. military probably won’t get involved in rescuing them from North Korea.
Someone who is severely wounded from the crash is Chris Lebold (played by Callan Mulvey), who tells Edward that Edward is in charge of leading everyone to safety. Edward, who is decked out in his military gear and assault rifle, then says wide-eyed: “I’m not trained for this!” Really? How did you become a U.S. Army sergeant, Edward? Just by sitting around doing computer tech duties?
Chris, who is dying, then asks Edward to give a gun to Chris’ son because the gun was passed down to the men in Chris’ family, starting with Chris’ grandfather. As already revealed in the trailer for “Valiant One,” Edward tries to stay alive with Stephanie, Jonah, Wilson and Joshua, who all try not to be detected by the North Korean military officials that are patrolling the area. During their ordeal, the U.S. Army survivors encounter a nameless farmer (played by Michael Cha), his wife (played by Jerina Son) and their teenage daughter Binna (played by Diana Tsoy).
The movie has awkward jokes about Wilson’s Korean American heritage. Almost nothing is revealed about “main hero” Edward except he tells his Army colleagues that he joined the military to get away from a dysfunctional family that included an abusive father with alcoholism. The only other personal information revealed about the other characters is that Wilson’s grandparents were originally from Korea. Stephanie also mentions that she was born in Vietnam and adopted by American parents.
“Valiant One” is duller than it should be, with every “suspenseful” scene nearly ruined by something that doesn’t ring true. The movie repeatedly shows that Edward admittedly doesn’t know what he’s doing. The film’s message is: “Can Edward find the courage to lead this ragtag group of survivors?”
Meanwhile, Edward is shockingly incompetent, such as in a scene where he doesn’t know how to use a compass. What happened to all the survivalist training he’s supposed to have as an Army sergeant? Don’t expect the movie to answer that question either.
Many of the performances in “Valiant One” are wooden, especially from Stokes and Condor, who have three main facial expressions in the movie: frightened, pouting and blankly disconnected. Borges has the thankless task of playing the token obnoxious character (Joshua Weaver), whose fate can be easily predicted if you’ve seen enough action movies with a character who mouths off too much and who is disliked by the rest of the group. Jun and Whitesell are mildly amusing in their scenes where Wilson and Jonah have mildly tease each other, but these two supporting characters are ultimately underdeveloped.
Near the end of “Valiant One,” there isn’t much “valiance” happening. There’s just a lot of scurrying around from people who are supposed to be Army professionals but just look like actors playing military dress-up. If “Valiant One” is meant to entice people to join the U.S. military, it might actually have the opposite effect because it unwittingly shows how someone who is supposed to be a U.S. Army sergeant is unprepared to do the things that military personnel are supposed to know how to do.
Briarcliff Entertainment released “Valiant One” in U.S. cinemas on January 31, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on February 18, 2025.