My Chemical Romance

Rating: Null/10 (15 September 2010)

"The more films show violence explicitly, the less they deal with it. And the less they make us understand what its roots are and where it's coming from." – Wim Wenders
"We Were Soldiers" is another war movie which uses advancements in technique and technology to resurrect centuries old war movie narratives.
Like most of these films ("Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" etc) the plot revolves around misguided notions of honour, war is reduced to a soldier's duty towards his "brothers in arms" (if any wider context is offered, these films self-destruct with hypocrisy), violence is glorified (people misguidedly believe that "graphic violence" can not be "glorification" - see "Passion of the Christ"), contemplation is revoked in favour for a string of titillative cum-shot/gun-shot action sequences, hyper-realism becomes mis-conflated with reality, the director is obsessed with attaining false notions of "realism" and "authenticity" (the closer the medium gets toward "reality" the further it gets from "truth"), soldier's are deified as salvific figures and the story is structured around both the "no man left behind principle" (the military cares about its deified soldiers - a lie) and a pornographic desire to serve up violent action sequences for the audience's enjoyment (the chemical rush afforded by violence operates in the same space as mammalian orgasms). Nevermind that US involvement in the Vietnam war was essentially one big war crime (the US wanted to stop elections, not "bring about a free Vietnam" as this film states), no, we have myths to uphold! No surprise then that Mel Gibson's the film's central star; his "Passion of the Christ" is "We Were Soldiers" and "Saving Private Ryan" in Sunday School garb: "Earn This" fascism for the bullet porn generation.
Incidentally, several recent studies show that those convicted of violent crimes have higher levels of testosterone; their testosterone levels resemble that of young males entering or going through puberty. The attraction of war is a juvenile thing, and so its no surprise that films, regardless of genre, which revel in violence tend to appeal to younger or male audiences. But not too young. As computer games and game consoles increasingly take war off the cinema screens and onto the screens of interactive media (kids can now band together online and fight battles by proxy), today's kids are likely to find "We Were Soldier's" positively archaic.
6/10 – Worth one viewing.