Lousy movie

Rating: 2/10 (9 January 2005)

Like another viewer has said, it is indeed difficult to write 10 lines on this garbage.
The story may be true or not, this movie was bad. Lame, despite all the fireworks. The music? So boring! Sentimental schmaltz stuff of the worst degree, creating NO atmosphere whatsoever, only seconding the sorry pictures.
By judging from the battle scenes, I expected that at least say 250 out of the 396 or so have died. Instead there were only 71 dead as we learn at the end. Sorry, but I had to laugh, the battle pictures we've been shown by the director seem not correspond to this relatively low casualty count. And of course we never learn how many enemy men were mowed down. This battle has only one side...
Another idiotic scene: One of the first guys (some Lieutenant) coming in with the first wave spots an enemy scout and immediately runs after him for into unknown enemy territory, but not only for a few meters but he keeps on chasing and chasing until finally the men draw fire. Worst of all, he drags all his men with him!! I mean how stupid a military leader can you possibly be?? Again, this may be a true incidence or not, but if a soldier behaves so stupidly, he doesn't deserve any better than getting whacked. I only felt pity for the poor fellows who had to follow their "leader" and got mostly killed in the process as well.
What happened to Madeleine Stowe?? Did she see a plastic surgeon to get her lips siliconed? Not sure, but she looked terribly bad here, suddenly has grown old in her face. And I do not believe that this was due to the "burdened" role she had to perform here. Her character was to forget about anyway, like all the other cliché soldier babes who looked all so good and shiny of course... All BS for me. The only one credible character in this sorry flick was the UPI photographer (Pepper?), the sharpshooter from Private Ryan. I really like the guy, he has a good intensity on screen.
I could go on ranting some more, but I could only repeat what other viewers have said already. I rate this crap a 2 out of 10. I give it 2 only because some (not all!) of the battle scenes seemed credible enough, especially the one night attack where the soldier says he can "smell 'em" and they light up the forest and indeed the enemy is right at them already.
Hamburger Hill is the much, much more touching and engaging film.