A Good Movie; More Importantly- Historically Accurate

Rating: 8/10 (15 March 2002)

A great criticism I have for current movies is that in an effort to be more marketable (or "politically correct") actual events from history will be modified or distorted at the expense of the real people who were involved with the real events (last year's ridiculous "historical" farce "Pearl Harbor" springs to mind); there are enough genuine heros with true stories to tell. Colonel Moore's in "Were Were Soldiers" (based on his book "We Were Soldiers Once, And Young") is one of these.
Before I continue, let me first say that I was a freshman in high school when the Paris Peace Treaty was signed in 1973, resulting in the withdrawal of all US troops from South Vietnam, and a junior when the North Vietnamese Army invaded and overran the unprotected South in 1975. Since that time I have studied Indochinese history in great detail, and have earned Master's degrees in both Asian Studies (South and Southeast Asia concentration) and International Affairs from the University of Michigan and Columbia University.
The movie itself is well photographed and exhibits great expertise with battlefield verisimilitude and special effects. More importantly, the film for the most part leaves political issues aside and tries to show us what Moore and his troops experienced those November days in 1965 in the Ia Drang Valley, and like it or not, whatever your opinions may be on US involvement in Vietnam, Moore's small, well trained force fought off and defeated far larger number of North Vietnamese Regulars in what was the first head-to-head combat between American and the invading Vietnamese Communist forces. That's what happened.
The North Vietnamese had hoped to inflict a large amount of casualties to alter American public opinion (which was very much in favor of the introduction of US troops). The surrounded US troops used artillery and air support to repel the attackers, and killed more than 1800 NVA troops (total US battle deaths were around 300, including part of the later battle not shown in the film). That's what happened.
What was very significant about this battle was that it convinced the North Vietnamese generals to never meet American troops ever again in a conventional battle situation on that scale, (and they didn't). It convinced the US strategists that the way to beat the North Vietnamese (and their South Vietnamese Viet Cong proxies) was to try to lure large units into battle using American ground forces as bait, so that artillery and air power could be brought to bear and inflict unacceptable casualties, diminishing the North's ability and ardor for occupying the South. This strategy (known as "attrition") did not work; the North Vietnamese stayed away from large unit action (as mentioned above) and they also did not care how many soldiers they lost; it's well known that there are 58,000 names of US war dead on the monument in Washington, DC, but the North Vietnamese war dead number two million by their own estimates.
"We Were Soldiers" is not entirely free of anachronistic 2001-era moral pronouncements, however, as the scene referring to a racist "White Only" sign in a laundramat mentioned by an innocent officer's wife back at the base who thought it referred to the color of the fabrics permitted in the machines. Had the scene ended with awkward looks, with the Black officer's wife present, it would have been a powerful moment. The politically correct indignant speechifying, followed by the Black woman's pained, but Oh-so-noble reply was clumsy and dumb (discrimination against Blacks in North Carolina in 1965?! Imagine that! Were these officer's wives supposed to be unaware of American history or the Civil Rights movement going on all around them?). Some of the early scenes with Mel Gibson as the loving Daddy were a bit heavy handed too, I thought ("Daddy, what's a war?" asks his daughter who could be type-cast for Cindy-Lou Who). The movie goes out of it's way to be even-handed in its depiction of the North Vietnamese, and goes a little too far, in my opinion, but there is no denying that they were well trained, well disciplined and courageous in battle. The real slaughter of that war was suffered by the South Vietnamese civilians at the hands of the NVA and Viet Cong, however, and most of whose commanders were apparently not as introspective as the defeated officer shown here.
All in all standing alone as a movie it is bit gory, but exciting and entertaining. As a "war movie" it is essentially accurate, and without the tiresome left-wing political overtones of "Platoon" "Full Metal Jacket" or "Apocalypse Now". Too many people just don't know the real history of that time and place, but that November in 1965, that's what really happened.