Imperfect, but relatively effective

Rating: 6/10 (31 May 2008)

If you are an aficionado of war movies, you've certainly seen it done better than this, but We Were Soldiers has it's moments. It's hard to cite any individual thing that I didn't like about the movie, but it just doesn't seem to all come together quite right. There are numerous moments that feel desperately cliché. Some of the writing is downright horrible. We don't really get to know any of the characters very well. The battles rarely carry any real suspense, save for the scenes of the few soldiers trapped in behind enemy lines. The whole movie has this air of sentimentality to it that just doesn't work. The makers also opted to include numerous scenes of the North Vietnamese soldiers. Clearly the filmmakers were attempting to add some humanity to the enemy, but they weren't very effective. The scenes felt tacked on, and didn't really add anything to the experience other than serving the minor purpose of allowing the audience to formulate that Gibson's character was anticipating the enemy's actions so we know we are supposed to be in awe of his leadership. It's a lot of things like that which just made the movie feel like it was spoon-feeding every step of the way. All in all, it's not a horrible movie. But, it probably could have been great, and it falls well short of that mark. It is a relatively generic war movie, and fans of the genre will probably be satisfied. However, it certainly isn't a great piece of film-making.