A movie on the elite Navy SEALs, said to be two years in the making, has just been completed and may be slated for release in the fall. The movie could not have come at the most opportune time; more than a month after the SEALs’ exploits in Pakistan, which led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, people still could not seem to get enough of the SEALs.

“Act of Valor,” according to a feature on the San Francisco Chronicle, will be the closest that viewers can get to witnessing an actual SEAL mission. Beyond just that, this movie shuns the usual bevy of Hollywood actors who can do no more than be SEALs for the duration of the movie; the lead actors, this time, are actual, real-life, Navy SEALs.

The project, the Chronicle shares further, came into fruition with the help of two SEALs with roots in the Bay Area. One of them, Duncan Smith, is an adventure filmmaker from San Francisco, while the other grew up on the Peninsula.

The movie was produced and directed by Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh. Waugh, of the production company Bandito Brothers, shared: “Just the way these guys stood holding their M4s (compact machine guns) was something you can’t teach to an actor… There are so many subtleties in the way the SEALs move or talk, they do a little magic for the camera all the time.”

The filmmakers had to hurdle the challenge of coming up with something that was authentic – truly SEAL – without giving too much away.