DIRECTOR: Randall Wallace
CAST:
Mel Gibson, Sam Elliott, Madeleine Stowe, Barry Pepper, Chris Klein, Keri Russell,
Don Duong, Ryan Hurst
REVIEW:
From writer-director Randall Wallace (writer of Braveheart and Pearl Harbor) comes this powerful Vietnam film covering the previously obscure Battle of the le Drang Valley in November 1965, in which Americans and North Vietnamese met each other in major combat for the first time, with three-hundred Americans of the Seventh Cavalry under Lt. Col. Hal Moore (Mel Gibson) desperately holding their surrounded position against wave after wave of a total of four thousand North Vietnamese troops. Remarkably, the film is dedicated to the soldiers of both sides, and while it unsurprisingly and understandably focuses much more heavily on the Americans, We Were Soldiers is the only Vietnam movie I have ever seen where the North Vietnamese soldiers and officers are portrayed with some measure of humanity. Also, while most Vietnam films depict the war as unnecessary or even immoral and the American forces as riddled with corrupt or brutal officers, We Were Soldiers strictly avoids any pontification on the rights or wrongs of our presence in Vietnam. The film’s sole mission is to honor the American soldiers, and this it does with a forcefulness equal to Black Hawk Down or even Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers. It is an exceptionally realistic war film, never flinching away from the truly horrific slaughter of warfare while still highlighting individual flashes of heroism and humanity along the way. Randall Wallace’s screenplay was adapted faithfully from the account of the battle written by Colonel Moore and war reporter Joe Galloway (played by Barry Pepper).
Importantly, while many films such as Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan plunge us almost immediately into combat, We Were Soldiers begins in America and lets us see the characters with their families, their wives and children, instantly granting them greater depth and therefore heightening the impact when some of them inevitably are killed. The central character is their commander, Colonel Hal Moore (Mel Gibson in a solid and authoritative performance), a well-educated, devoutly religious officer who scarcely bats an eye as bullets whiz past his head but cares deeply for the young men under his command. Moore, a Korean veteran, has studied the errors of the French military which led to their massacre by the North Vietnamese years earlier, and is determined not to lead his soldiers to the same fate, but is none too pleased to learn his regiment has the same name as that of the ill-fated General Custer. Also figuring prominently is Moore’s hardened second-in-command Sergeant Plumley (Sam Elliott), veteran of airborne operations in WWII and Korea, young and idealistic Lieutenant Geoghan (Chris Klein), daredevil helicopter pilot Crandall (Greg Kinnear), and the wives of Moore and Geoghan (Madeleine Stowe and Keri Russell). During these opening scenes, the issues of the day are not ignored; we see President Johnson announcing a significant increase in US forces on the television, and one of the wives expresses outrage at a black soldier being allowed to die for his country side by side with whites but not to wash his clothes in the same Laundromat. Messages such as these are sometimes expressed a little heavy-handedly, but the above situation is fully deserving of any level of scorn. Once we actually get to Vietnam, three other characters stand out; eager war correspondent Galloway (Barry Pepper, at the other end of the extreme from his hardened sniper in Saving Private Ryan), a young officer named Savage (Ryan Hurst) who must hold out against constant enemy assaults, and the North Vietnamese commander, Colonel Ahn (Vietnamese actor Don Duong), the same man who masterminded the defeat of the French a decade before. Ahn is every bit as quick-thinking as Moore and shares his ability to anticipate the other side’s actions. Pepper’s character is particularly important; he mirrors many of those in the audience as he enters bright-eyed but is quickly shocked and horrified by the carnage he witnesses first-hand and ultimately feels too overwhelmed to believe he can ever do justice to Moore and his men. It is also significant that Colonel Ahn is never demonized; we see both he and Moore praying, we see both murmuring encouragement to their wounded and weary men, and in one scene they both gaze thoughtfully up at the moon. The filmmakers give us a brief shot of a young Vietnamese soldier placing a picture of a girl in his pocket, and later as Moore writes condolences to the widow of one of his men, the scene shifts to that Vietnamese girl mourning her own lost soldier.
The battle scenes are every bit the equals of those in any other war film in existence, with some of the graphic violence genuinely hard to watch, and in between the constant intense combat we get detours to the home front, where the Army is so unprepared for the flood of casualties that taxis have to deliver the news. The wives of Moore and Geoghan volunteer to take the dreaded telegrams to the appropriate women, and it is always in the back of both their minds that one of the telegrams might turn out to be for one of them. As in Black Hawk Down the message is hammered home that the soldiers are not fighting for politics, or even for their country; it just comes down to each other, the men next to them. They have all experienced it together and when the fighting is done they are the only ones who can understand. Even the initially enthusiastic characters like Crandall and Galloway are quickly sobered, and their eyes and expressions reflect without words how profoundly moved they have been by what they have witnessed. And We Were Soldiers is a profound viewing experience.
