Valiant One is a watered-down entry in the subgenre of movies about American soldiers in peril. Done right, as in Black Hawk Down and Lone Survivor, such pictures can be almost stomach-churningly intense. Done wrong, you get jingoistic shlock like 2012’s Act of Valor. This one falls right smack in the middle – not great, not awful, just…there.
Captain Edward Brockman (Chase Stokes) is a cocky solider assigned to what should be a simple mission. He takes a helicopter full of tech specialists into the field to repair a piece of communications equipment. On the way back, their chopper crash lands in North Korea. The group, which also includes Specialist Selby (Lana Condor), has to figure out how to get across the border before being captured and, presumably, tortured.
Given what we know about North Korea, that’s not a bad set-up. There’s obviously tension to be mined from the idea of American soldiers getting trapped inside the hostile country. And, indeed, there are plenty of shootouts and close calls, which director Steve Barnett stages in generic fashion. You certainly don’t grow bored by the action sequences, but they lack the frayed-nerve quality the best examples of soldiers-in-peril movies provide.
Weak character development similarly blunts the overall impact. Brockman is a one-note figure who makes a predicable arc from smart-ass to dependable leader. Lana Condor (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before) is an appealing presence, and she nicely avoids turning Selby into a tough-chick stereotype. Instead, she plays the character as a smart, intuitive woman who just happens to be a soldier. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in a minor subplot involving her efforts to protect a young North Korean girl. Selby is always secondary to Brockman, though, rendering it disappointing whenever the focus shifts back to the less interesting person.
In a very odd stylistic choice, Valiant One often uses rap music to underscore the action. That has the effect of making life-or-death sequences play like a music video. On the plus side, the story contains a few moments of effective tension-breaking humor, along with a neatly photographed finale set inside an underground tunnel. This is indicative of the film overall. If you want a movie about soldiers doing their thing, you could do a lot worse. Conversely, you could do a whole lot better.
out of four
Valiant One is rated R for violence and language throughout. The running time is 1 hour and 21 minutes.
© 2025 Mike McGranaghan