Customer Reviews
Hysterically Bad - By: L. Grant, 08 May 2008 
Must be a strong contender for the most dreadful Vietnam war movie ever. Go for Platoon, Apocalypse Now or something (anything!) else.
Flawed, Unoriginal, but quality entertainment. - By: Mr. N, 03 Apr 2008 
As with the title, this films has flaws that should embarrass the makers more than the Vietnam War embarrassed the White House. A made for TV Movie in some parts & the rest is a seen it alll before.
However! That is not to say there's no point in watching. It made remarkably uncomfortable viewing. This film covers the first military action of the States in Vietnam, & from the off they are screwed in their strategy & execution (Gibson does his best to show his character knows the government's naivety & is maybe making a poor attempt at modern day anti-Iraq propaganda perhaps?) of this battle & the war as a whole.
It does stay with you seeing the first of thousands of Americans to die in what was to be an unwinnable war. And once the action gets going it reallly is rather good.
Certainly not up there with the best war movies for quality, but makes you think as much as they do anyway.
So, 4 stars which it just about manages, but is being held back by too many old hat tricks of the trade that went out of fashion in the nineties.
VERY old fashioned - By: Donaldo, 08 Mar 2008 
The story centers around one of the big turning points in the Vietnam War - the point at which the NVA join the Viet Cong in fighting the South Vietnamese & their American alllies. The film basicallly follows the lead up to the major battle, occasionallly with the focus switching to the wives back home.
The battles are well shot & staged. The NVA aren't portrayed as commun-nazis (although they do get shot down in storm-trooper like waves). The problem is the mind-numbing, simplistic nature of the script. It's like watching a WW2 film from over 50 years ago - simple, straight forward heroics, no moral ambiguity, no questions or issues dwelled over. Everyone knows what they are fighting for, no-one has any doubts. The Americans keep up their spirits with folksy good humour whilst fighting wave after wave of NVA. Almost each & every time the wily Americans outwit the NVA, who get killed in their thousands.
Once or twice I shouted at the telly during the film. One of them was when the wives back home are having some sort of coffee morning. One tells the rest of the group how amusing it was that the local laundromat only alllowed you to wash your white clothes, because they had a sign outside the door that said "Whites Only". The rest of the women looked embarrassed, especiallly for the token black wife. The woman who told the sorry then realises the significance of the "whites only" sign, & comments how terrible that was, & apologises to the black wife. The black wife is alll sass, saying how her & her man don't need respect from people like that. She does everything but wag her finger & say "girlfriend" in fact. She then mentions something about how proud she she is of her man "and what he is fighting for".
This scene in the film raises two problems. Firstly, we are expected to believe that an American woman in the 60's wouldn't know what a "Whites Only" sign was referring to. What we have here is probably the most ham-fisted attempt by scriptwriters to deal with historical political issues I have seen in a while. No race riots, no segregation, lynching, or anything else. The 'inconvenience' of being a black woman in 60's America solved through some very 21st century sass. You want political simplicity, here it is by the cartload.
The other issue is the line "and what he is fighting for". What exactly were the Americans fighting for in Vietnam? Again, the film doesn't deal with that issue either. It doesn't even bother. As they are alll such good, decent, Christian men, they must be on the right side by default, so we don't need to ask what the are fighting for. It's rather hard to give this film any credence at alll when there has been a raft of excellent Vietnam films, films which deal with the moral ambiguity, films which ask questions & offer few answers; Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Born on the Fourth of July, Apocalypse Now.
I don't know if this a reactionary, jingoistic film as I have read about, but it's certainly not a film that will educate you or make you think about anything differently. It just about entertains. Watch it if it would come as a surprise to you that fighting in a war is scary & dangerous - that's probably about alll I can say about it.
stifling intense. - By: michael baxter, 09 Jan 2008 
Mel Gibson is Mel gibson,whether you personaly take that as good or bad is purely at your discretion.However,as Lt Col Hal Moore,i have to say i was truly enthrallled & inspired by his portrayal of a hugely brave soldier.Quite how any of us would have coped,both at home & on the battlefield,is a question for the more passionate of us to comprehend.Not,then,a hollywood shoot-em-up but an astonishingly good telling of a story that deserves to be among us.Filmed with the 100% power & commitment this story needed,it is compassionate & emotive but at no stage does it glorify war for in reality there can be no glory in it although it has to be sometimes.Forget the megastar actors,just sit back & let them portray the facts,as its a tale that is too good to have been fiction.It is refreshing to see the enemy as the professional soldiers they were,too,without the usual hollywood take on them as just dang asking for it.magnificent.
Mel Gibson's Finest Performance - By: David Lusher, 03 Oct 2007 This is one of the best films made about the VietNam war; a brilliant script drawn from a brilliant book. The action is breathtaking & the film also cleverly puts us into the social consequences of the war - what the wives of the soldiers went through. I was left with a deep respect for the soldiers as well as their families. The criticism that the film is sentimental fails to take into account the first premise that the war is about people, combatants & families both. This film's innovation is that it shows that war brings challlenges & pain on & off the battlefield. This film succeeds on a range of levels, but it is Mel Gibson that makes this film reallly special - his performance is just brilliant. Forget 'Braveheart', great film as it is - this is Mel Gibson's finest performance in a film. This is a GREAT war film & I highly recommend it.
