Now that Tom Clancy Presents: Act of Valor has been published for four months and the movie Act of Valor has been on the movie box office hits list for a full six weeks (debuting at #1 in its first week of release on February 28), it’s time to review the bidding: Reviewing events over the past four months in regards to the book and the movie can tell us a lot about American core values.
What are America’s core values? Politicians and pundits might disagree, but most influential strategic and military analysts agree that these values are captured in the document, A National Strategic Narrative, which highlights “our enduring national interests – prosperity and security” which is bounded by our “national values.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the movie Act of Valor spoke directly to the values captured in A National Strategic Narrative and one reason the movie has grossed over $100M worldwide, smashing pundits’ predictions about how well this unique movie would do. Not only that, but audiences routinely stood, cheered and clapped at the end of the movie, representing a welling up of patriotism that was, in a word, stunning.
Likewise, the novelization of the movie, Tom Clancy Presents: Act of Valor which Dick Couch and I had the privilege of writing, spent most of the first quarter of this year on the New York Times mass market paperback best-seller list. While most novelizations are “carried” by the movie, i.e. once a movie is a hit people also become interested in the novelization, Tom Clancy Presents: Act of Valor broke out on New York Times mass market paperback best-seller list the week it was released (six weeks prior to the movie’s release) and remained there for eight weeks, rising as high as #4 on the list (as well as #4 on the Publisher’s Weekly best-seller list). And the book is still selling well, its end-of-quarter statistics show 440,000 copies in print and the book is already into its fifth printing. It’s still in every airport bookstore!
Here’s what readers offered on the web:
- This book has intrigue, romance, and the rigors of war. You are immediately hooked. Very good. I would recommend it to anyone.
- The movie was so good I needed to read the book to research the movie. This was very well written, although we expect no less from this author, I found this as gripping as the movie. Well worth the read.
- Great story, full of insight into current equipment and tactics. The story line has a lot of emotional tie-ins but from the mission aspects the story is thrilling to the last detail.
- Saw the movie, but the book gives a better perspective of what the Seals life is really like. The movie was hard to follow, but the book makes the story much more clear.
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