We Were Soldiers Review
by Mark R. Leeper (markrleeper AT yahoo DOT com)March 4th, 2002
WE WERE SOLDIERS
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: WE WERE SOLDIERS tells the story of the bloodiest three days of the battle of Ia Drang in the Central
Highlands of Vietnam. This is a moving and powerful account of the Vietnam War experience for once told with respect for the soldiers on both sides. Mel Gibson stars as the commander of the American Seventh Cavalry in
Vietnam. Rating: 9 (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to +4)
I knew there was something that I hated about just about every Vietnam War film I had seen. It took WE WERE SOLDIERS to focus exactly what it was. Every major film about the war has had a very sharp ax to grind. Every major film about that war, with the possible exception of THE KILLING FIELDS, has been populated by war criminals and freaks. Probably the best is APOCALYPSE NOW, a film that I think paints the average solder as a stoner who wants little more than to get high and listen to loud music. They are led by commanders who are out of touch with reality and frequently also with sanity. Perhaps the critics are right that it is a great film, but even if it is, it is lousy history. The people I knew who had served in Vietnam, acquaintances, friends, and even my father-in-law, were not drug users and certainly not baby killers. Not all people who served, perhaps, but most were just average decent people who had gone though an unpleasant experience and survived it with their mental balance intact. These are not the characters of APOCALYPSE NOW.
The other respected films about that war all have their problems. The second most respected film about Vietnam is THE DEER HUNTER which has a nice portrait of American life, but there is really very little about the war experience other than this weird idea that captured soldiers were forced to play Russian Roulette. This one guy has survived a relatively long time always winning at a suicide game that gives him a 50% of surviving each round making the mathematics as bizarre as the history. PLATOON I remember as having a bad case of "the literaries" with dramatic scenes of people falling to their knees in slow motion as they discover the deep meanings of the war and the evil of their own side. FULL METAL JACKET is basically two stories about the war, one of Marine boot camp and a recruit driven over the edge, one about what it was like to take down one sniper. THE GREEN BERETS is about tall Americans standing up to a sub-human enemy. Not one of these films has a credible account of what the people I know must have gone through. Most filmmakers have shied away from saying the fighter was a reasonable, moral person getting an unpleasant job done and that that was pretty much true of the enemy we were fighting also. The World War II soldier got a much better break from cinema. At this moment of writing WE WERE SOLDIERS seems the only film about the war I can remember that approaches an honest and accurate look at the experience.
WE WERE SOLDIERS was written and directed by Randall Wallace, who previously wrote and directed THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK and wrote PEARL HARBOR. It is the true story of the Seventh Cavalry (no, it didn't die with Custer at the Little Big Horn), their preparation for the battlefield, and their actual fighting. It tells of their three days, November 14-16, 1965, in the Battle of Ia Drang. That was one of the bloodiest battles in American history. The Seventh was led in that battle by Lt. Col. Harold Moore and the battle was covered in part by war journalist Joe Galloway. The film is based on the book WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE... AND YOUNG by (now) Lt. Gen. Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway. Historical advisors for the film are the same Lt. Gen. Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway who wrote the book and were present in the battle. Given that this is essentially the account of the American commander one might expect the possibility that it could be a whitewash of American military policy. It could have been another THE GREEN BERETS. To the contrary, in at least three major issues the story is fairly negative on how the military runs the war. And Moore is also critical of himself as a commander. The heroes are the individual soldiers. Once a soldier is on the field, he no longer is fighting for the commanders, he is fighting for himself and his fellow soldiers. This film is among other things a tribute to the soldier. It also shows more than passing respect for the enemy soldier. WE WERE SOLDIERS takes pains to show that the enemy is also made up of people hoping desperately to get back to their loved ones.
The approach of a close adaptation of accounts of the participants is the one Ridley Scott took with his recent BLACK HAWK DOWN. Where it differs is mostly in the way the soldiers are characterized and made real, even at the possible risk of sentimentalizing. We see their home lives as well as their professional ones. We see their wives and their children, so that when they are in battle we know whom they are hoping to get back to. We see something of their families' loss when some are killed. We get to know Moore's values and the love that he has for his men and the loss he feels when they will not be returning home. BLACK HAWK DOWN was a good film, but WE WERE SOLDIERS is a better one for that very reason. Be prepared. This is a realistic view of battle and people whom you come to care about are going to be killed. And some of the violence in the film is very realistic in ways that are not pleasant to watch.
Mel Gibson who plays Hal Moore is used to playing warriors after GALLIPOLI, THE PATRIOT, and BRAVEHEART. He plays very much the ideal commander here, worried mostly about his men and the possibility he might screw up. Sam Elliot stands out has Moore's grouchy second in command Sgt-Maj. Plumley. Chris Klein is as usual for him the archetypal sweet guy with a good reason for getting home, the type that Moore would most worry about. Where the film has problems is he may be a little too sweet. So is Moore's daughter. It reminds us we are seeing things from Moore's point of view rather than seeing a detached account. At times that view is more emotional than we want to see in a war film. But the scene of Moore leaving home and going to war is a poignant as the scene of Frederic March returning from war in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES.
This will not be the most respected portrait of the Vietnam War on film. But it has what is unfortunately an unusual point of view about that war. It says that the men who fought it were human, fallible, and moral. It accords them the same respect that the men who fought in World War II got in the films of their time. For the originality of that approach I would rate this film a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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Copyright 2002 Mark R. Leeper
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
