Be warned...

Rating: 6/10 (22 February 2002)

WE WERE SOLDIERS is not the kind of movie I feel comfortable saying "I enjoyed" or "I liked." But I'm not sure that's the reaction one is supposed to have upon seeing it. GLORY and BRAVEHEART took us to the middle of the battlefield like never before. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and BLACK HAWK DOWN showed us the frenzied chaos of modern warfare with new and brutal realism. WE WERE SOLDIERS may end up being the film that some claim goes too far in portraying the unspeakable horror of war. I attended a screening that consisted largely of Vietnam veterans and their wives. Several attendees excused themselves suddenly during the battlefield scenes which make up more than half of the movie. Many watched through covered faces and teary eyes. But when the credits began to roll, not a soul moved. Not one. It was only when the lights came up that the audience responded with brief applause before getting up to leave. And I am sure I am not the only one who left the theatre with a sickening knot in my stomach.
The story of WE WERE SOLDIERS is thin at best. After an introduction to the major characters, all are thrown into the hell of battle, either the physical hell of Vietnam or the mental anguish of waiting on the homefront for news one hopes never comes. For the rest of the movie, it becomes about one thing: which characters will stay alive? Which, I realize, is part of the point in a movie like this, because that's what it became about for the soldiers: staying alive. Not how they got there, not whether or not they should have been there, not how they felt about being there-- just staying alive. And the battlefield scenes are the most horrific I have ever seen, previously cited examples included. They are gory, they are long, they are brutally relentless. Again, I understand that is perhaps part of the point, part of the lesson about war. But that is a hard thing to ask of a theatre full of people who have paid 8 dollars apiece to see a movie that doesn't look especially violent based on the trailer.
In the end, I can't say I "enjoyed" WE WERE SOLDIERS. I can't say I "liked" it. What I can say is that, for the first time, I may have some tiny, infinitesimal, ultimately meaningless fraction of a notion of what my father-in-law went through in Vietnam, and why he's never spoken a word about it to anyone. And that, perhaps, is a much more important thing to be able to say.