Pearl Harbor comes to Vietnam

Rating: 3/10 (7 February 2002)

Do we need another Vietnam film? Randall Wallace appears to think so, and so offers up this simplistic slice of wishful thinking. The psychic wounds of America's loss in SE Asia still must run deep, so Wallace offers a battle early in the conflict that the Americans won against the odds. The whole affair has the gung-ho empty headedness of John Wayne's The Green Berets, and it's hard to think what is more offensive: reducing Vietnam to one America successs; the patronizing attempts to humanize the Vietnamese, the treacly scenes of the wives back home or Mel's chats with his daughter in which he explains what a war is. Actually, it's that last one, as Randall is clearly aligning his audience with this girl.
Only a few graphic battle scenes, cribbed from Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, succeed. But, avoid at all costs. Please.