Graphic war scenes but inert story

Rating: 5/10 (13 May 2019)

This fact based drama stars Mel Gibson as Lt. Col. Hal Moore. He has gathered a force of 400 troopers and with aerial support they land in the Ia Drang Valley of north Vietnam in November 1965. It is the first major battle of the Vietnam War.
The US 7th Air Cavalry are surrounded by over 2000 enemy soldiers and they engage in a bloody battle to break through the North Vietnamese lines.
Back home the loved ones of the soldiers get news of what has been taking place. Moore needs to live up to the promise to his soldiers. "I will leave no man behind...dead or alive. We will all come home together."
Randall Wallace who wrote Braveheart reunited with Mel Gibson for We Were Soldiers. This time Wallace also directs and the war scenes are directly influenced by Saving Private Ryan. It is bloody and graphic.
However the story is pedestrian. When the action shifts to the family back home it becomes saccharine and even frankly silly as Moore's wife delivers letters to soldiers wives telling them that their husbands have died.
The big explosions are done well. The story even if it is true does not compare with Platoon or Apocalypse Now. The characters are two dimensional, they are stock characters that could had arrived from any multitude of war films.
Ironically, Gibson directed a better war film with Hacksaw Ridge.