An Old-Fashioned War Movie about a Modern War.

Rating: 6/10 (7 November 2006)

I had low expectations of "We Were Soldiers", thanks to the less-than-enthusiastic critical reviews on its release. However, I decided to watch it when it was on TV recently and I was genuinely impressed.
The film recreates the mood and the attitudes of America in 1965. Yes, some scenes are dripping with cheese by modern standards but I believe that the film-makers did not set out to make another "Full Metal Jacket" or "Platoon".
"We Were Soldiers" is the sort of war movie that Hollywood made when a lot of the actors and film crew had WWII and Korean War combat experience. Like the fighting men it depicts, "We Were Soldiers" tells the story of a battle, plain and simple. Using the memoirs of an experienced professional soldier as a starting point, the crew and cast have put together a dramatised account of America's first military action in Vietnam, the battle at la Drang.
la Drang paved the way for American involvement in the struggle for Vietnam's political future. Outnumbered 10-1, elements of the American 5th and 7th Cavalry Divisions fought 4,000 PAVN and Viet Cong soldiers to a standstill over 3 days. Both sides suffered heavy casualties and the battle was only decided by American air support and pin-point artillery strikes. The PAVN were forced to withdraw but were able to re-occupy the la Drang region as soon as the Americans had evacuated their casualties. As pointed out by a PAVN general towards the end of the film, the battle allowed the Vietnamese to analyse American air mobile tactics and work out a simple way to counteract them.
"We Were Soldiers" is a tribute to the Americans who fought in Vietnam, pure and simple. The film makes a few telling digs at American foreign policy, military organisation and planning and how unprepared the US Army was when the casualty reports came flooding in. However, overall this movie works hard to capture the terrifying reality of close quarter battle with modern assault weapons. The battle scenes are graphic, chaotic and bloody and are in no way a glorification of violence. The movie has been criticised for depicting waves of PAVN and Viet Cong fighters being mown down while US soldiers are picked off piecemeal, but that was the truth of the battle. The Americans dug in and without artillery or air support, all the PAVN commanders could do was order their men on the ground to attack the American defenders en masse.
Despite its cheesy "Soldiers at Home" and "Slow-mo Death Scene" moments, "We Were Soldiers" works as a war movie because it tells a story of men in combat with very little political bias and a reasonably healthy respect for historical fact.
Yes, there are other films about Vietnam with a stronger "Anti-War" message, but condemning "We Were Soldiers" for not being like "Platoon" et al is like condemning an army for doing its duty.