Dead or Alive we'll all come home together

Rating: 8/10 (30 May 2013)

***SPOILERS*** It's November 1965 and the US military's new formed 7th Calvary, the same unit commanded by Gen. George Custer at the Little Big Horn in 1876, is about to get its baptism in blood & fire in the Central Highland's La Drange Valley of Souh Vietnam. It's there where a division of battle hardened North Vietnamese regular troops reinforced by squads of Viet-Cong guerrillas are to meet them in what was to become the bloodiest US Military engagement since the end of he Korean War.
Ferried into combat by helicopter gunships the 7th Calvary finds itself pinned down by murderous enemy fire as soon as its troops dis-bark from their aircraft. It up to US Army Let. Col Hal Moore, Mel Gibson, to not only complete his mission of wiping out all enemy resistance in the Central Highlands but bring his men, dead alive and injured, back to base at all cost. But the North Vietnamese troops and their Viet-Cong allies have other things in store for them. Which is to wipe out to the last man the entire 7th Calvary like they, as Viet Minh guerrillas, did to a unit of French Foreign Legionnaires 11 years ago in 1954.
Non-stop action as US Calvary units slug it out with the communist forces who are determined to end the US involvement in Vietnam almost as soon as it starts. Having trained for their mission at Ft. Benning Georgia the 7th Calvary were ready for action in the highlands and jungles of South Vietnam but what they found in the fanatical and suicidal attacks by the communist troops were far more bloody and intense then what they ever expected. In the four days, November 14-18 1965, of combat the US suffered almost 300 killed and 500 wounded with the 7th Calvary taking the brunt of the losses. It was on the last day of fighting with the 7th Calvary down to it's last man and bullet that the US Army and air force finally came to its rescue. In them opening up a massive artillery and air bombardment that finally dislodged and had turn tail the attacking North Vietnamese and Viet-Cong forces.
A quite and reserved, or strong and silent type, Mel Gibson was never better then in the role of Let. Col. Hal Moore who together with his top kick or sergeant major Basil Pulmley, Sam Elliott, kept their men from panicking by them being right out there, in the thick of the fighting, with them on the front lines and leading by example. Among those US soldiers who in the end didn't make it back was 2nd Let. Jack Geoghegan, Chris Kline, who despite being deeply religious and not wanting to take lives ended up losing his own in trying to save a fellow 7th Calvary men who was badly wounded.
There's also 5th generation US soldier reporter and photographer for Stars & Stripes Joe Gallaway, Barry Pepper, who's willing if necessary to lose his life by him being a conscientious objector but not taking someone else's even an enemy soldier who's out to kill him. It's Gallaway who ends up getting the story of his career coupled with dozens of photos of the fighting to be dispatched and showed to those of us back home that the war in Vietnam wasn't the cakewalk that we were lead, by our leaders in the White House Congress and the Pentagon, to believe that it was. The Vietnam War went on for some ten years and costing 58,000 US servicemen and women lives by the time it finally ended. And sadly enough it ended with the North Vitnamese and Viet-Cong on the winning side!
P.S The saddest and most touching scenes in the movie has nothing to do with it's combat sequences but the scenes with the wives of those who fell in the fighting. It was them who were to get a knock on the door and told by official letter the heart breaking and tearful news from the Secretary of the Army": I'm Sorry to Inform You".