Unoriginal, badly written and directed wannabe star vehicle

Rating: 6/10 (10 March 2002)

Randall Wallace should stay away from Hollywood. Having written the not-too-bad screenplay for Gibson's "Braveheart", he felt the need to assault our senses of good taste by giving us "The Man In The Iron Mask", the script for "Pearl Harbor" and now, this piece of unmemorable if time-passing, overly-stylised pap. The opening half-hour is appallingly mishandled, with Gibson looking uncomfortable and saggy, and the dialogue becoming increasingly corny. Shephard growls his way into Vietnam, and the 'training camp' looks, literally, like a walk in the park compared to Joel Schumacher's gritty "Tigerland". Once we enter the war, things do pick up, mainly because there is hardly any dialogue, and that which we do hear is thankfully drowned out by the fantastic sound effects. A hearty attempt is made at showing some sort of Vietnamese perspective, but we still have a long way to go before we can safely say that we are being un-biased in our depiction of war in cinema. There are some cringeworthy moments in terms of the direction (including two appalling montage-attempts that look like commercial spoofs), but these are countered by some stunning visuals, notably the silhouetted Vietnamese soldiers closing in on two Yankee heroes. A special mention must go to the lack of anything new happening in the performances. Gibson gives perhaps his worst judged performance of his career, Shephard is an entertaining cliche, Kinnear does his smarmy thing and Pepper does not attempt to break any new ground either. Stowe, however, does her best with a poor role, lending it dignity and passion when it doesn't really deserve it. It seems as if "based on a true story" is now an excuse to go overboard on overly-patriotic, melodramatic glorified history, and "We Were Soldiers" proves to be another case of that very annoying Hollywood symptom (although the superior "Black Hawk Down" did not suffer as badly)