A good step towards depicting the reality of war but not far enough

Rating: 6/10 (6 August 2008)

This movie delivers the message "not even the winner wins any battle" very effectively. In addition, it is more realistic and showing more of the psychology of war, bereavement and fear than most American war movies do, creating a multi-dimensional picture of a sequence of events at wartime. Still, if psychology of war is the main issue (instead of the plot which is very simple in this case) it could have been a lot better if the movie had shown much more of the Vietnamese soldiers' psychology and understanding of the war. The way the Vietnamese commander is depicted is very shallow and stereotypical. In addition, there are some unrealistic happenings in the movie. First of all, a trained soldier, especially a commander of an infantry unit (Lt. Co. Hal Moore) would NEVER face enemy machine gun fire attack standing upright (with a handgun in his hand). Everyone MUST lie down in that situation to minimize risk of injury; if you join the army you learn that on the first week. I know it looks a lot more heroic and brave on the screen standing that way but doing that is plain stupid and irresponsible, an equivalent of playing Russian roulette. Second, if an infantry unit expects enemy attack waiting in a ditch, soldiers should not stand at whispering distance to each other. The defendants must keep at least 4-5 meters distance between themselves on the defense line, otherwise a single hand grenade may kill several of them at once. Again, that is probably a compromise movie makers made to create a more appealing outcome. To sum up, reality of war is a lot less romantic than most war movies, and still less romantic than this more realistic war movie; but I suppose people do not want to see reality of war in the raw because they are more inclined to enjoy a movie that reinforces their beliefs and stereotypes and which satisfies their romantic hero images and illusions. After all, movie makers want to make money, and I must admit they made an OK compromise on this one. One must keep in mind that this is still not a documentary, though.