ho hum dorky Vietnam blech

Rating: 4/10 (24 September 2005)

Randall Wallace made one fun movie that was blown out of proportion and pushed him into an ego happy land on par with Leonardo DiCaprio. Braveheart was popcorn munching heaven. Everything since then has been a steady drivel of nothinglike coffee grounds forced, FORCED from the bottom of the pot to make an unwilling cuppa. This movie is bland on so many levels it's a shame. I think it was about 20 minutes into it when the helicopters that look like knock off plastic hueys on a blue screen do little aerials that I realized money here would have been better spent on advancing technology for turning ducks into toaster ovens. From there it just sort of goes down hill. Lessee... we've got the obligatory 5 seconds of screen time for the token black guy who just looks confused (seriously, do any of you know how MANY black people really fought in the Vietnam war? Jeepers), the obligatory shaky, gritty camera shots when the battle gets wicky wild; the reverb echo effects just before the big big oh no mortars fall; friendly fire; blood blood everywhere; grim face shots of our lead actor; young faces going into battle; battle screamsdang, we have a veritable A-list A-team hereand yet... this movie just kills itself. It's like Disney doing a pornoevery shot in between is crystal clear and filled with'we know not the evil we do' sentimentality. It's saccharine, it's silly, it's not worth your while. If you want a good war moviego for broke with Full Metal Jacket, Thin Red Line, or Dr. Strangelove. However, if you're in the market for lackluster string sections sound-tracking slow-motion montages of sucky images with poor poor poor poor adobe premiere flame effects... why, your cattle car stops here! Watch as Mel Gibson takes another lofty glance at that mountain over th'ar; see minority groups squabble and then make ends meet; witness Randall Wallace and Mel Gibson reconcile their bigotry in Braveheart (if you don't know what I'm talking about, then perhaps you should read more) by attempting rationalizations from the enemy perspective (gee, they're almost human!); C-class emotional drama... the list of daunting accomplishments goes on. 4 / 10 for this sludge fest. It gets 4 for actually accomplishing what I think it set out to do: show lot's of people being killed, make shallow stabs at moral messages, parade around with American imperialism, and make some money.
As an addendum (and quoting another post I made) Just because a film is about human tragedy (american and/or otherwise) doesn't mean we should exempt it from criticism on its (lack of) artistic merit as a film. Furthermore, why bother making a film that relies so heavily on its source material that it has fans raving, "well you can't understand unless you've read the book, otherwise you'll never understand." This is as idiotic as the faith defense. I shouldn't have to read the book! It's a movie! If I wanted to read the book, then I would have read the book! People make films because they're a fundamentally different medium from the written word. It takes guts (though often with very poor results) to turn a book into a screenplay. While the source material might be "good" in its own right, it in no way excuses the film for falling flat.