Grows on you during and soon after....

Rating: 9/10 (10 November 2005)

A war movie without war - brilliantly brought to the screen. Amazing how you slowly come to grips, just like the characters do, that all this is going to be anti-climactic - none of what they went thru is going to matter in the least. This is brought home in the final scene where they return home and they get the 1st glimpse of what the brotherhood of being a marine means when a Vietnam vet "crashes" their parade and comes on board the bus and asks to sit with them. They look at him like he is crazy and he looks at them like they are long lost relatives. He gets to live vicariously through them the feeling of what getting an actual parade for returning soldiers is like and the returning marines see what actual marines who went thru the horrors of war turn out like. Ultimately, its a vision into the future what they will feel about each other and the next generation of marines as the years pass. Before this time, they had been seeing their experience as individuals - to some degee this is their final lesson in becoming a marine. In a way - this is the MAIN theme of the movie..its not about the characters, its not about war, its about being a marine and once a marine always a marine...
"We are still out there in that desert"....
"No matter what you may do with the rest of your life, your hands never forget the feeling of holding that rifle".