We Were Soldiers (2002, R):

Directed by: Randall Wallace

Grade: B—

Okay, so We Were Soldiers starts off on the wrong note.  The opening half hour, meant to inspire us to get to know the soldiers we will be spending 138 minutes with and to follow them through their training in preparation for the Battle of la Drang valley, makes a notable but unsuccessful attempt at American patriotism.  Director Randall Wallace definitely gets us to feel sentimental to most of these guys, though otherwise, everything is so preachy and as much I hate to use this word, clichéd, especially the dialogue. We are informed rather quickly that the year is 1965 and America is preparing for its first major battle with North Vietnam at la Drang, a site where a large number of French soldiers were wiped out eight years previously.  With Gibson, as Colonel Hal Moore, set to lead these men into battle, we begin to think that we’re not watching a war film.  Are we or are we not watching a Gibson star vehicle?  This is a major question I had, but only for the first half hour.

Fortunately, Wallace redeems We Were Soldiers almost as soon as the American soldiers land in Nam and engage the North Vietnamese in combat.  The battle scenes, realistic and graphic, are obviously influenced by Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down.  But the fact is that they work rather well.  What follows for the remainder of the film is the first three days of the Battle of la Drang, in which an estimated 72 Americans and 1,800 North Vietnamese were KIA.  How many more were wounded or went missing is hard to tell.  In short, We Were Soldiers might have been better had it cut the opening scenes short and skipped right ahead to the battle. 

The final battle scene in We Were Soldiers reminded me strongly of the Battle of Little Round Top featured in the 1993 masterpiece Gettysburg—the outnumbered army, nearly out of ammunition, fixes bayonets and charges the numerically superior enemy as a last-ditch defense.  Is it not true that the best defense is an offense?  In reality, the final bayonet charge depicted in We Were Soldiers didn’t happen, but it definitely adds a high sense of stirring, action-oriented intensity to the feature and is in my opinion We Were Soldiers's most powerful moment.

Nevertheless, even as the movie’s final battle sequence came to a close and the epilogue began, I felt that I would have to grade We Were Soldiers in C or C+ territory.  To me, it was a passé war film that contained intense close combat sequences but otherwise didn’t hold a special ring to it.  However, I let the film sink in and I realized that director Wallace included some important merits in his picture.  It’s the only Vietnam War film I’ve seen that doesn’t treat the American soldiers with disrespect or direct shame on our military for interfering in that bloody conflict in the first place (with the exception of the Green Berets), while still offering the soldier’s eye perspective of the combat operations.  Secondly, and I know that almost every other review of We Were Soldiers I have read (after I watched the movie) includes that the film also offers a few glimpses into the North Vietnamese perspective of the firefight and treats both sides with equal respect.  This is something that hasn’t been done into many other Vietnam War flicks, though was accomplished in Clint Eastwood’s later, 2006, World War II film Letters from Iwo Jima, a piece of cinema I hold in higher regard then We Were Soldiers.  What I'm basically explaining is that, after reflecting on these virtues We Were Soldiers's possesses, I increased my opinion on the movie by a margin or two. 

I still feel that Gibson’s performance wasn’t exactly on par with what it should have been, the film’s first half hour was a little hackneyed, and I do have an earnest feeling that this is a story that has been well told before.  However, many real Vietnam War veterans have applauded director Wallace for filming the most gritty and realistic Vietnam War combat footage in a Hollywood motion picture yet, for treating both sides with decency, and for not turning the movie into a political propaganda film like Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, even though all three of those films are very unflinching in their depiction of Vietnam warfare as well.

I think it’s rather palpable that We Were Soldiers is never to hold a spot in a list of ‘those great war films’.  But even if that be the case, I don’t think it’s a movie that should be skipped over only for that reason.

B—