'Anti-war' movie that celebrates war

Rating: 5/10 (20 January 2002)

This movie tries to be another 'anti-war' movie, but ends up celebrating war instead. As a viewer, you get almost two hours of constant shooting, gore, and heroism. Here it just comes along with the excuse that those events actually happened. As if celebrating violence is bad if it is fictional, but it is perfectly OK if it is 'based on a true story'. Even those scenes that supposedly demonstrate the hell of war are taken as an opportunity to show how brave 'our boys' really are.
Emotionally, this movie is extremely flat - which is mainly due to the fact that we don't get to know any of the characters. They all are just one-dimensional stereotypes. So we do not really care about them. The psychological stress those soldiers must have been under never really comes across.
Technically, this movie is well done, but it doesn't offer enough substance to be considered a good movie. At least the American propaganda and patriotism are not as heavy-handed as they could be...