Star Trek "Heroes" and Bleedin Heart Viewpoints

Rating: Null/10 (19 November 2011)

Another movie in which the American fighting man is portrayed as weak, stupid, untrained, and rebellious.
The Captain won't help a family get out of harm's way, but has no trouble assaulting a radar tower. Stupid. In one case, take ten seconds and point to the avenue of escape. In the other, avoid the tower; it's not the mission.
A well-manned squad has a sniper and a translator, but not a radioman or a machine gunner. What?
Bullets slice easily through all helmets except one. They wanted the irony of the guy pulling off his helmet and then getting the head shot.
The Star Trek philosophy of the Captain being challenged every step by his subordinates. Might be the way it works in space. Didn't happen in WWII. More people die when you "put it to a vote."
Snipers die when they fire continuously. Not their job. The German ate it because he tried to take everybody out; the American did the same.
A sniper's basic job in battle is to make the enemy keep low and go slow. He takes out the head (officers and radiomen), the muscle (mostly machine gunners, bazookas, and BARs, or the morale (medics). If the bad guys take out your chain of command, take away your strength, or take away any hope of surviving a wound, you tend not to fight as well.
If your man throws a hissy fit and wants to desert, you help him. Not gonna happen. Even if you are a pacifist piece of crap like the Captain, you have to keep your unit cohesive.
Tanks enter a hot zone in a city without firing a shot. Stupid. Tanks, like planes, provide massive firepower but also huge targets. The Queen of Battle takes the cities. Tanks avoid them and fire at them from a distance. Tank busters wouldn't have been used in this situation. They probably would have taken out the very bridge that both sides wanted to own, but neither side wanted to destroy.
You let the rookie hang back and cry. No. If you don't want to fight with the rest of us, you can do your part by attracting bullets.
The way to infiltrate the enemy lines is to crowd together, joke, and sing while you walk along through the pretty fields. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Spread out; keep quiet; learn how to use the 1,000 yard stare.
A Captain loses 96 men and rationalizes that he saved 10 times that amount. Not in our Army. I waited for him to say 104. That would have been believable, but I guess this Captain was leading a battalion, not a company. And somehow, he ends up leading not a battalion, not a company, not a platoon, but a mere squad. Most likely, a buck sarge or a corporal would have led that squad.
Non-combat pencil jockeys call the shots as the Normandy Invasion is going on. Uh, no.
If you have a prisoner, you let him go while you dig graves. No, to letting him go. No, to digging graves during battle. You take care of the living first; and of the living, you take care of your own men first.
Although communication was atrocious, all platoons had a radioman, and some squads did. The proper place for a radioman is two feet to the rear of the Captain at all times.
The horrid portrayal of the American fighting man goes on and on. They weren't wimps. Yes, everyone was scared silly, but they didn't challenge every fricking order. If you are part of the 10% of the Army known as line soldiers, the chances are good that you are not coming back. You know that going in.
War is terrible. You don't want to experience it. But if you have to, try to be like the sarge. Don't be stupid like the sniper, cowardly like the translator, "conflicted" like Hanks, treasonous like what's his name, etc.
And Private Ryan himself. At that cemetery, he should have been thinking about all the men he killed, not whether he lived up to the Captain's standards. He killed the Captain and most of his men. A fitting end would have Ryan eating a bullet.
The Screaming Eagles (Puking Chickens) and the Rangers were highly trained. They weren't wimps. They didn't have anybody in their units who was untrained in rifle fire. They knew that their job was to do the heaviest fighting and take the bloodiest losses. Every one of them knew how to fire, how to bandage a wound, how to use a radio, bazooka, Garand, BAR, how to lead. When one went down, another would take his place. Battlefield promotions were never more prevalent than in those units.
Those men volunteered to be in those units. They might have been drafted, but they chose to join the roughest and most courageous outfits that we had.
I salute our fighting men. Although I was a ground pounder, my contribution to American freedom was relatively small and insignificant. I only hope that I could have acted like one of the few valiant soldiers portrayed here.
And as to the movie itself: Shameful. Utterly shameful.