Violence Overdone, But Still A Solid War Movie

Rating: 8/10 (1 August 2006)

Although still a solid war movie, it wasn't up to my expectations, although it's still a "keeper" in my collection. With the cast, and hype of this film at the time of its release, I excepted something more, something akin to Saving Private Ryan.....but it wasn't to be. Even though the latter is known for its graphic violence, it's this film that I thought the violence was overdone, not SPR. The action here doesn't start for 40 minutes, but when it does it loud, it's heavy and it's continuous over most of the next 95 minutes.
Shorter periods of the violent scenes would have made this much better, maybe even an "excellent" film.
"We Were Soldiers" had things I appreciated that are rare in today's action films: 1 - a pro-military film concerning a Viet Nam war battle; 2- fairly tame language. This is not pro-Viet Nam War. Hollywood would never do that, but at least it shows the soldiers in a solid, valiant light. It's also refreshing to see good references to God and prayer. Mel Gibson's character here is a decent Catholic. Greg Kinnear is solid, too, as the helicopter pilot and Madeline Stowe had a memorable scene delivering message of war deaths to their spouses. That was touching stuff. But, mostly, this is an action film and the battle scenes are gruesome at times, particularly near the end of the film.