Some action movies ease you into danger. Navy SEALS opens by shooting down a helicopter, interrupting a wedding, and sending a heavily armed Michael Biehn into the Mediterranean before Charlie Sheen has even had time to sober up. This is not a subtle movie. It is loud, reckless, occasionally ridiculous, and built with the confidence of a VHS cover that already knows you are taking it home. Welcome back to Sunset Video: Quick Picks, our stroll through the video store to find a rental. And today we’re rewinding Navy SEALS from 1990, directed by Lewis Teague, and I’m going to tell you why this critically battered military action movie still makes for a great Friday-night rental.
Now the setup here is pure action-movie efficiency. A Navy SEAL team rescues American hostages in the Middle East and discovers a stockpile of stolen Stinger missiles. They’re ordered to leave before destroying them, which means those missiles immediately become everyone’s problem.
The mission falls to Lieutenant James Curran, played by Michael Biehn, and his team, including second in command Charlie Sheen as Dale Hawkins, a man who treats military discipline as more of a loose suggestion. And that pairing is the movie. Biehn brings the steel. He plays Curran as controlled, capable, and quietly exhausted by the human bottle rocket standing next to him.
Sheen plays Hawkins like Maverick wandered into the wrong branch of the military and nobody had the courage to send him home. Hawkins jumps off bridges to avoid weddings, steals his own car back from a tow truck, starts fights he does not need to start, and remains convinced every problem can be solved by moving faster and firing more bullets.
He’s not exactly a model officer. He’s barely a model adult. But Sheen gives the movie its pulse. Biehn gives it its weight. And that push and pull between professionalism and recklessness keeps Navy SEALS moving even when the screenplay starts collecting side plots like overdue rental fees.
The supporting team here is stacked as well. Bill Paxton brings easygoing charm as Billy Graham. Rick Rossovich, Cyril O’Reilly, Paul Sanchez, and a young Dennis Haysbert help sell the squad as a group that has worked, fought, and probably destroyed several hotel rooms together. You may not get deep biographies on these guys, but you know who you want beside you when the shooting starts.
I think Lewis Teague also gives the missions real scale. The opening hostage rescue is tight and aggressive. The freighter sequence has the team approaching from a submarine in small motorized rafts. The final Beirut assault moves from stealth to gunfire, explosives, armored vehicles, and an underwater knife fight because it was the end of the 80s and why not.
I think there’s just an appealing physical quality to it all. Boats feel like boats. Weapons have weight. Buildings explode instead of politely sparkling in the background and overall the practical effects and stunt work still look polished all these years later.
The production used former SEALs to train the cast, and the actors went through two weeks of field exercises and weapons instruction. The U.S. Navy had concerns about the project and limited its cooperation, so the filmmakers leaned on the Spanish military for ships, helicopters, vehicles, and locations. While Southern Spain doubled for Beirut, giving the finale a convincing war-zone texture that I think makes the movie.
Navy SEALS is absolutely a Hollywood fantasy, but it has enough tactical detail and hardware to make that fantasy feel expensive. And expensive it was. The film cost around $20M and only earned roughly $25M domestically. So despite the production value this military actioner was not the breakout Orion Pictures wanted during a summer already packed with bigger hits.
Critics were rough on it, and some of the complaints are fair. The tone jumps around. The romance involving the journalist character feels bolted onto the side. The villains are painted with a very broad 1990 action-movie brush. And at nearly two hours, the film occasionally pauses the mission to remind us that somebody wanted this to be Top Gun with scuba gear.
But Navy SEALS knows how to deliver the rental goods. The cast is ridiculously watchable. Michael Biehn is in full command mode. Charlie Sheen is operating at peak loose-cannon velocity. Bill Paxton can steal a scene just by standing near it. The missions are varied, the explosions are generous, and the movie takes its macho mythology just seriously enough to work.
It also found a friendlier audience on VHS. When it hit the rental market in early 1991, it climbed into the top five. Which I think feels like its natural habitat. This was built to sit on a video-store shelf with Charlie Sheen holding a weapon and the title printed in letters visible from the parking lot.
Clerks even turned that reputation into a joke, presenting Navy SEALS as exactly the kind of gloriously brain-off tape an excited customer would grab from the rack. And honestly? That’s fair. Navy SEALS is uneven, overlong, and about as delicate as a grenade rolling across a tile floor. But it also has Michael Biehn leading an elite action cast, Charlie Sheen behaving like a caffeinated demolition charge, old-school stunt work, great military hardware, and a finale that refuses to stop until someone has fought underwater.
So it’s a loaded rental package. Not the most accurate in terms of mission briefings, but absolutely the movie you rent when the box art promises guns, boats, explosions, and tough guy bravado bursting from all the seams.
Let me know in the comments: is Navy SEALS an underrated action favorite, or is this one best left on the bottom shelf? And if you enjoyed this Quick Pick, hit like, subscribe to Sunset Video, and stick around. There are plenty more forgotten favorites waiting in the video store. Thanks for watching, rewind your tapes, and I’ll see you next time.
Anthony J. Digioia II © 2026
SilverScreen Analysis & Sunset Video Rentals
