The emperor's new clothes

Rating: 3/10 (5 July 2006)

Despite managing to give fleeting impressions of importance and quality, this film is a complete put-on. The long "set-piece" scenes (wedding, Russian roulette, etc.) are much discussed, usually either in the context of being "essential for character development" or "boring". In fact they're a delaying mechanism behind which the filmmaker attempts to hide his lack of storytelling skills. Once he does try to move things along, awkwardly jumping without explanation or exposition from one bloated set-piece to another, you can see the reason for his procrastination - despite being desperate to give the impression of profundity and truth, he really has nothing to say. The actors go a long way toward diverting attention from the film's awkward vacuousness, by giving false and short-lived impressions of character and narrative, but this falls apart whenever the filmmaker attempts to make anything "happen" narrative-wise.
De Niro, Walken and company deserve some recognition for some good acting, albeit for such a misguided cause. Ultimately, despite some controversy, many of the film's questionable portrayals of Vietnam, Vietnamese, America, Americans and war are to be condemned more for their cinematic silliness than for their historical inaccuracy.