This is a gory remake of John Waynes "The Green Berets"

Rating: Null/10 (8 March 2002)

If you haven't figured it out yet, Mel Gibson makes formula movies. No deep thoughts and only superficially profound. These awful movies (BraveHeart" and "The Patriot" come to mind) highlight Mel's fighting prowess, his love of children, his lovely wife, his profound sense of duty to his god etc etc etc. This is all the drivel that Conservative, macho military types love. And I'm here to say that it's crap. How a movie about the immoral and misguided Vietnam War can be Apolitical in this day and age is utterly beyond me. Is this just shamless post 9/11 marketing by sleezy Hollywood. Those peddlers of mindless garbage know when the market for mediocre war movies is ripe. And I guess it is right now. So lets get gory effects and match it with idiotic combat sequences worthy of "The A Team" and a dirty but determined looking Mel Gibson. The super patriots will get all misty eyed about it. It's a formula that can't fail. It's great how Mel is the heroic freedom fighter in "Braveheart", struggling to drive out the English invader from his beloved Scotland. Now compare that to his role as Col Moore in "We Were Soldiers". He, or rather we, are now the invaders with all the odds in our favor and guess what, he and/or we are still the heroic role models of leadership and honor. Funny how we always win and look good doing it. wether we are fighting to oust the invader or, as with Vietnam, we ARE the goddamn invader!!! Disgusting ain't it??? I sincerly hope that there are a few veterans of the Ia Drang Valley that recognize this movie for the macho testosterone gore fest that it is. We should never have gone there, we should never have supported French Colonialism (especially since we condemned the Nazi invasion of France in 1940!!!), we should have respected the will of the Vietnamese people since we prize the "peoples will" in our own Constitution, we should have been less hysterical and irrational about Communism, we should never have used weapons of mass destruction (napalm, agent orange etc)and above all NEVER trust politicians and corporate types. That's the Vietnam war in a nut shell. I'd smoke weed too if I had been sent into this insanity.