A war movie in the wrong way

Rating: 4/10 (2 December 2007)

How to make a good war movie? It's easy: get the facts right and and get the battle scenes right. This movie fails with the facts and then some.
The battle scenes look great with some obvious Vietnam stuff like napalm and period details like white phosphorus and so on. Though, a very unrealistic cliché is that the higher ranked the character, the more upright he walks and fights even under heavy fire.
The dialogue contains some hilarious gems that I think are only now put in a script. Before that, they existed only as clichés. Imagine hearing "tell my wife I love her" from the mouth of a dying soldier, just after you thought this movie could be more cliché only if they did that.
I guess by now it is well-known this movie doesn't really make the facts right. The battle is something off Green Beret. While it's probably quite banal having a Vietnam movie in which US doesn't exactly prevail by now, it's another thing to claim the opposite. You can still have your altruism and the other few good aspects of the human nature in a war even if you don't win.
I find it surprising people approve of movies like this out of the respect they have war veterans (of their own side). It's one thing to respect and to let movies like this change the facts - and in this case, just not be that good at all. I'd think that would be insulting to the veterans.