We Were Soldiers Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)March 4th, 2002
WE WERE SOLDIERS
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Producer/star Mel Gibson hands over directing responsibility to "Braveheart" screenwriter Randall Wallace ("The Man in the Iron Mask") for their Vietnam War film, "We Were Soldiers." Adapted by Wallace from the book "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young" by Lt. Gen Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway (played by Gibson and Barry Pepper in the film), this is the least successful of a recent spate of ultra violent war films that ennoble the U.S. military.
The film opens with a flashback depicting the North Vietnamese slaughtering the unprepared French Army in a surprise attack. Cut to Fort Benning, GA, where Lt. Moore and his family are just arriving to receive his new
assignment.
Julie Moore (Madeline Stowe, "The Last of the Mohicans") gathers wives, such as the expecting Barbara Geoghegan (Keri Russell, TV's "Felicity"), together to discuss local supermarkets and racism. Her husband buddies up to copter pilot Major Bruce Crandall (Greg Kinnear, "Nurse Betty"), whom he'll need to rely on as his 'cavalry' lead, and prays with 2nd Lieutenant Jack Geoghegan (Chris Klein, "Rollerball").
The Harvard military historian and strategist is delivered two blows before he ships out. He'll be heading up the First Battalion of the Seventh Calvary, Custer's regiment, and no declaration of 'state of emergency' will result in one third of his trained men being replaced with new recruits. He vows to his men that they will all be equals, that he will be the first and last to leave the battlefield, and that, dead or alive, they will all come home together. On November 14, 1965, they begin landing in Ia Drang, known ever after as "The Valley of Death," where 400 U.S. soldiers will take on 4,000 North Vietnamese.
Ever since "Saving Private Ryan," it seems as though war films are made with a sense of one upmanship - how much more hellish, realistic and
gruesomely
violent can they become? "We Were Soldiers" often feels like an unrelenting slaughterfest, and while its antiwar message couldn't be clearer, it attempts to make too many statements and becomes confused in the process.
Director/screenwriter Wallace tries to give a face to the North Vietnamese by following one soldier who's been keeping a diary and a picture of a young woman, yet his rally to attempt to bayonet Moore is met with a joke. A coda where the diary has found its way into the hands of that young woman breaks credulity. Moore responds to a chapel inquiry from Geoghegan about not wanting
to create more orphans by asking God to ignore enemy prayers and help them blow the enemy away. A battered American flag and listing of those who died at film's end comes across as an obvious ploy to link these soldiers with World
Trade Center victims. The film offers no stance on American involvement in Vietnam except by portraying the U.S. soldiers as 'dying for their country.'
Gibson is noble and earnest as Moore, a man determined to do right by his men, but his characterization lacks subtle depths. Stowe, ridiculously outfitted in a period Cher wig, leads the female home front segments down a bad path. Not a single one of these scenes work, especially when Stowe and Russell begin parading around like Stepford wives bearing telegrams. Kinnear is uneven as Crandall, good when reacting to bringing the wounded out, too softly sensitive when making eye contact with Moore. Sam Elliot is amusing as
Moore's gruff right hand man, Sergeant Major Plumley, but he's frequently unintelligible and no more than a sidekick. Klein is a saintly symbol. Barry
Pepper brings some grit to the lone journalist present through the fighting.
Technically, the film succeeds in immersing its audience in the midst of a hellish battle, but Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down" is far more successful in getting us inside its characters' experience.
C+
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