A strong libel against war

Rating: 8/10 (14 March 2017)

Is there any just war? A question that can be present in this movie. A war fought 20,000 kms away from one's country might be patriotic? A war fought only for political, economic or ideological reasons can be just? An American young man is deeply patriotic and imbued with all the conventional values concerning war, joins voluntarily the Marine Force and goes to Vietnam as a sergeant. After being wounded in combat he becomes quadriplegic and returns home on a wheelchair after having spent some time in a hospital for veterans where conditions are appallingly bad even with rats running freely around. Anyway he is still defending those patriotic conventional values for what he thinks he had fought in war. However after meeting a girl whom he knew in their youth and whom he loved and seeing her being a member of an activist group against American fighting in Vietnam and seeing the police charging them violently he begins to take conscience of the real injustice of that war. After several vicissitudes of moral degradation that include a familiar conflict at home, alcoholism and an exile to a home for veterans in Mexico by a village where there is an atmosphere of alcohol, gambling and prostitution, he abandons all this and returns to USA where he joins the activist movement against war and publishes a book with his autobiography. Everything is narrated with great image and dialogue realism. The only flaw in my opinion is the not so good performance of Tom Cruise whom I never considered a very good actor and seems not very authentic, abusing some times of histrionic hysterism. Anyway a movie that can be considered a strong libel not only against the Vietnam war but against all wars.