"I am Viet Nam"--Not!

Rating: Null/10 (26 November 2002)

Can you hate a film like this for being historically inaccurate? Well, I don't know, but I'm going to give it a shot....
First and foremost, its view of the Viet Cong is more of a literary pretention than any kind of realistic assessment. Charlie may have been "moving too fast, or dug in too deep" to have his own version of USO shows, but, according to historians, he also rioted in the tunnel systems on any Fridays that there was no film. Furthermore, to judge from the work of Gen. Harry Sumner, and Gen Moore's book We Were Soldiers Once...and Young, the guerillas were not reverting to some cruel, primitive self, but simply trying to keep alive in the absence of regular supplies or the support of regular forces.
Likewise, in this film, Col. Kurtz is supposed to be the man who actually understands the war. In many respects though, he's just a William Calley type who broke free and pursued his methods on his own.
To repeat my point, this film is not about Viet Nam; it's about what some film-makers living in California wanted that war to be. It may be interesting as a "trip flick"--the original script, The Psychedelic Soldier, was in fact just that--but as a statement of war, it fails.