Finally, the beginning

Rating: 8/10 (9 March 2002)

"We Were Soldiers" offers little new insight on war, but does offer a new perspective on the U.S. in Vietnam. Based one of the first battles of what would become the Vietnam War, the film gives a rare perspective for those who are too young to remember. We had always been told the story from the middle, from "Platoon" to "Forrest Gump." We'd always seen Vietnam used to illustrate the horror and uselessness of war, often the psychological side. We'd also seen it from the end, where the real struggle for many veterans was only beginning.
"Soldiers" tells the beginning of the story, before the Â‘Second Indochina War' became for Americans merely 'Vietnam.' The Nov. 14-16 Battle of Ia Drang Valley was the first major battle between American soldiers and North Vietnamese Army regulars (as opposed to the guerrilla Viet Cong). At this time there was still hope for some U.S. success, at least militarily (25,000 anti-war protesters would march on Washington mere weeks later). The film contains little talk about Communism, nor the American government's anti-Communist "policy of containment" in southeast Asia that got us into this war, but concentrates on the human side: you're called, you go, out of duty.
While this is the first worthwhile film of 2002, to say that this is "the best war film ever" (as one user put it) is a huge overstatement. I question a lot of Wallace's directing choices here, like the overuse of slow motion. It really got tiresome after a while. The narrative itself could have packed a bigger emotional punch had they cut it differently. This may have had a lot to do with Wallace's script and his apparent attachment to it. Upon seeing the footage, it would have been evident to me that he really had something with the home front scenes, the wives and widows, with Madeleine Stowe's (as Gen. Moore's wife) and Keri Russell's characters. I saw opportunities to weave those stories more with the battle scenes but Wallace--or someone else who pulls the strings--did not see it that way. Someone may have felt that audiences were looking for intense, sustained, bloody battle sequences, given the success of the standard-setting "Saving Private Ryan" and with the intense "Black Hawk Down" still in many theaters.

It's still solid, though. Definitely worth seeing. Mel Gibson's work as Airmobile Division commander Lt. Colonel Hal Moore is solid, but the best reason to watch this is Sam Elliott's performance as Moore's second-in-command, Sgt. Major Basil Plumley.
Grade: B-