We Were Soldiers is uneven but a moving tribute to Vietnam Warriors

Rating: 7/10 (7 August 2005)

This movie unfolds slowly, beginning with a somewhat corny attempt to build a picture of the soldiers at home. Mel Gibson seems to be a likable sort, although he is a bit much as the gung-ho, Bible-thumping colonel in the Air Cavalry. His wife at first seems rather unsympathetic. In fact, she looks as if she were stung in the upper lip by a bee. Her performance, and that of the other officer's wives, comes off as rather stilted. Once orders come through and Gibson's regiment are deployed to Vietnam, things pick up considerably. A wave of helicopters takes the first sixty men to a hot landing zone in the Central Highlands. The photography is impressive and the action ratchets up very quickly. Right after landing, some dope decides to chase an enemy scout up a hill into the jungle, leading his squad after him. This foolhardy act comes off as a bit absurd, but the results form an important part of the story. The small group of soldiers are cut off from the rest of the regiment, and for the next day and night, they are under continual attack from an enemy determined to annihilate them. The surviving NCO displays a coolness under fire that saves the lives of at least some of his fellows. Down with the main body of the regiment, which has been steadily reinforced, the colonel and his tough-as-nails sergeant have their hands full fending off wave after wave of enemy combatants. While some might contend that the movie is a bit over the top here and there, it does a good job of depicting the confusion, excitement, and fear of a pitched battle. Many of the scenes are gruesome and seemingly realistic, with the minor criticism that support of US troops from artillery and from the air seems a bit too instantaneous and precise. At one point, the NVA and Viet Cong are overwhelming the surrounded and outnumbered Americans and yet are cut to pieces by machine gun fire and napalm from the air. At the same time, however, some of the Americans are killed or seriously wounded from friendly fire simply because the targeted enemy is right on top of them. The guy who plays the determined North Vietnamese commander does an effective job, sending so many of his troops to their deaths in trying at all costs to defeat the Americans in their first major battle and win an important psychological victory. It might be said that "We Were Soldiers" attempts to honor the enemy nearly as much as it does our own forces. They certainly died in much greater numbers than we did and this skirmish was no exception. Regardless of the outcome of the war, any vet who survived a struggle of this intensity should hold his head high, while those who died deserve every honor accorded them.
An eery dirge punctuates the action at certain key moments in the battle, and after it is over, the field littered with corpses, the colonel (it is said) finishes his tour of duty and finally returns home to be reunited with his family, one of the lucky ones who came home physically and mentally intact. When he rings the door bell and his wife, fearing the worst, sends the kids to bed and opens the door, it is a very emotional moment. The credits then begin to roll to a moving anthem. So, although the movie takes too much time to get rolling, it has a strong patriotic finish and seems to be a fairly accurate, if somewhat propagandized depiction of battle in the Vietnam era. On balance, it is a good, stirring war movie much more like those about WWII than the usual cynical offering about Vietnam. Worth watching more than once.