A Somber, Walloping War Drama

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2019)

1 November 2014. Some people might refer to Saving Private Ryan (1998) as one the great classic war films, especially its extended opening scene of the landing on Normandy Beach on D-Day. Others might refer to Black Hawk Down (2001) for its extended failed military mission in Somalia as one of the most gripping battle action films. Still others would cite Apocalypse Now (1979) as the most intense, personal, surrealistic war movie. Other films that people would laud loudly about would include The Hurt Locker (2008)or Dr. Strangelove (1964) for their cynical look at war, Jarhead (2005) for its immersive, ambient experience of long moments of war.
We Were Soldiers, however, is an unabashed look at the terror and fearsome pain and emotional ripping apart of familial bonds and the heat and sorrow and fear and honor and courage of the individual and team effort of battle. Regardless of how might believe, feel of President Obama's reluctance to continue American commitment to Iraq or Afghanistan, even Syria, this movie is a must see before one should reflect on the realities of war and its impact. Perhaps the closest this movie might come or a movie to compare We Were Soldiers to might be the epic Civil War movie Gettysberg (1993). We Were Soldiers is presented in a non-glorified way with an inclusionary experience of the wives of many of the soldiers as well. We see glimpses of the Vietnamese soldier themselves.
The only small weaknesses of this movie might be its imbalance of primarily focusing on the American military experience with a significant but still token view of the emotive backdrop of the Vietnamese and one scene where there is an attempt to local lost American soldiers on the field of battle that doesn't seem quite realistic and perhaps even fool-hearty as well as omission of some of the more graphic hand to hand combat images while at the same time including the bloody bullets ripping through bodies themselves. But none of these weaknesses detract from the overall greatest of this movie.
In sum We Were Soldiers seems to reflect some of the best, if not the best directorial, scripted, and filmed movie about the awfulness of war in a human and compassionate but somber way.