We Were Cliched and Written Poorly

Rating: 1/10 (17 September 2002)

This movie reeks of cliches and historical fantasy. Mel Gibson hams it up as the good Christian colonel who loves his men like his own sons, and apparently is untouchable by bullets or scratches despite wandering into heavy firefights. We also have several other characters like a young father, a grumpy stern CO, the outcast soldier, and so on. You know, typical cliched characters you'd have seen in previous war movies (the absolute worst has to come from Wallace's poor portrayal of Blacks). As a result of this, I felt no pity for them. They weren't believable so how I can show emotion, I ask you?
The basic plot behind the movie is this... American soldiers are sent mindlessly into a valley for no explainable reason so they can fight X-number of NVA. They are indeed outnumbered and so the contest of wits between Mel Gibson's blue eyes versus the NV leader begins. I'm pretty sure Wallace was trying to get this whole setup out of the way as quickly as possible so he can really bring WAR onto the big screen. Now when I say he brings it, he really brings war. His production crew must have had a field day trying to drum up every possible way a soldier can die in that battle. The firefights themselves were pretty decent and accurate portrayals although some of the scenes in the movie were questionable and downright obscene (the search for the missing platoon was fictitious and how the Americans drove the NVA from the hills was also fictitious).

No only was the movie cliched, and poorly written, but I should also add We Were Boring. Check the History Channel and see the interviews of the REAL soldiers (they didn't like the Hollywood-ized version either) from that battle to get the REAL events of the battle, or read the book.
Thumbs down.