Navy SEALs (1990)
Navy SEALS is a 1990 American military action film, directed by Lewis Teague, written by Chuck Pfarrer and Gary Goldman, and produced by Brenda Feigen and Bernard Williams with consultant William Bradley. The film stars Charlie Sheen, Michael Biehn, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Rick Rossovich, Cyril O’Reilly, Bill Paxton, and Dennis Haysbert.RELATED:
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Plot.
The USS Forrestal, an aircraft carrier on station in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, receives a mayday from a civilian cargo ship named Kuwaiti Star. The ship reports that they have been attacked, are on fire and adrift. A deployed Navy SH-3 helicopter attempts to rescue the crew, but is downed by a gunboat and the aircrew is captured. Meanwhile, United States Navy SEALs Dale Hawkins (Charlie Sheen), James Curran (Michael Biehn), William “Billy” Graham (Dennis Haysbert), James Leary (Rick Rossovich), Homer Rexer (Cyril O’Reilly), Floyd “God” Dane (Bill Paxton), and Ramos (Paul Sanchez) are recovering from a bachelor party. Graham is to be married, but the wedding is canceled at the last minute when the whole team is paged to rescue the captured aircrew.
In the Mediterranean, the leader of the terrorists that shot at the Navy helicopter, Ben Shaheed (Nicholas Kadi), orders the killing of the hostages. One crewmember is killed on the spot and another is beaten up, but the SEAL team arrives just in time to prevent any further kills. Reacting to a suspicious noise, Hawkins breaks silence when he encounters Shaheed in an adjoining room, inadvertently alerting the terrorists.
Shaheed claims to be an Egyptian sailor also being held by the terrorists, and is left by the SEALs. As the SEALs evacuate the hostages from the area, Hawkins and Graham stumble across a warehouse containing Stinger missiles.
Hawkins attempts to return to the warehouse to destroy the missiles, only to be ordered by Curran to proceed with extraction.
On board an aircraft carrier later that night, the individual team members are debriefed by Naval Intelligence. Curran’s decision to leave the Stinger missiles behind is questioned, but Curran retorts that his primary mission was to rescue the aircrew and that Naval Intelligence did not do their job properly. Meanwhile, Hawkins is highly agitated by the mission and has trouble dealing with the emotional upheaval the mission provided. Curran tries to calm him down but is rebuffed by Hawkins.
Production.
In the winter of 1986 Brenda Feigen, then an agent at the William Morris Agency, was introduced to Chuck Pfarrer through one of her clients. Pfarrer, an active duty navy SEAL who wrote screenplays in his spare time, had just sold “The Crook Factory,” a script about Ernest Hemingway’s life. Feigen encouraged him to write a script based on his experiences. After retiring from the SEALs, Pfarrer wrote the script, which Feigen shopped to Orion Pictures, Warner Brothers, and United Artists, hoping to create a bidding war. Orion ultimately purchased the script, with Feigen acting as producer. Feigen wanted Ridley Scott to direct, but negotiations fell through. Producers met with Roger Donaldson, but he didn’t like the script, Richard Marquand was then hired, but his death in 1987 stopped pre-production until Lewis Teague was brought in as a replacement.