Vietnam 'simulator'

Rating: 6/10 (7 August 2006)

It's clear from many of the reviewers who were there, that they feel We Were Soldiers is authentic in many respects to the soldier's experience at that stage of the Vietnam War. As a mid-30s Brit living in London, whose biggest daily hardship is an overcrowded tube, I know I'd be on shaky ground tackling those aspects of this movie. But it's not a documentary - it's a movie and on some level it is intended to be both an artistic artefact and a piece of entertainment, and is not above criticism as either. What intrigues me is what it says about Gibson, because ostensibly although it is not about Gibson (it's about 'the men') Gibson's presence is a transcendent factor. Somewhere along the line this handsome, cheekboned 'Australian' matinée idol has become a chunky, stoic and troubled American who is increasingly marching to a different drum to mainstream Hollywood. 'Braveheart' could be said to be the turning point (another Wallace collaboration) where Gibson also wanted to showing the graphic slaughter of a 'real' battle, but which took on the entire historical context of the Scottish Wars of Independence in an a flagrantly unauthentic manner. With 'We Were Soldiers' the obsession with battle accuracy is maintained and the historical/political context almost entirely dispensed with. This might be unsettling, for those who think soldiers must always be thinking why they are being sent somewhere to do something, but the case Gibson makes (basically through 2 hours of cinematic attrition) is that soldiers are thinking of staying alive and/or through obeying orders. There is in some way an attempt to encapsulate the entire 'Vietnam experience' in two hours; reckless battle tactics, unprepared men, hostile terrain, a disciplined committed enemy, reliance on increasingly indiscriminate air support and of course, the role of 'the media' which is depicted with a conspicuous lack of sympathy near the end of the film. But the visual experience is of a maelstrom, once the battle begins, and after a while it is wearing. There is no character identification really outside the two leads and the graphic brutality is instructive without being revealing or, to be nakedly honest, that entertaining. It becomes more of a simulator than a film.