Honest war drama not over-shadowed by Hollywood's greatest star

Rating: 7/10 (28 January 2005)

Despite the political commentary that has understandably accompanied discussion of Randall Wallace's We Were Soldiers, it should be remembered that the film is primarily based on a true story, with the actual protagonists having had considerable creative input. The movie sets itself up as following the American soldiers as they make their nation's first intervention into the most controversial conflict of the last century, and, with any group of close-knit people who find themselves outnumbered, surrounded, and at war, the instinct is to root for them in their heroic battle against a faceless enemy.
Except that's not the full story of We Were Soldiers. Some understanding and insight into the enemy's strategy and mindset is attempted, if not always achieved, and although we rarely get to see how the North Vietnamese coped with and approached battle and death as we do the Americans, at least we have more of them than what could have been a merciless, villainous, thoroughly dislikeable conveyor belt of cannon fodder. It's made clear that everyone involved in this battle is not doing so because of their duty to their countries or their belief in ideologies or faith in religions. They are there because they are soldiers. Everything else is strictly secondary.
If soldierhood defines the main protagonists, their roles as husbands and fathers is brought directly into play simultaneously, as the families on the home front receive shattering news in the case of each fatality, as the conflict develops. This is a new and interesting slant taken by a film that puts itself primarily into the battleground, and although the two separate sequences struggle to gel greatly together, it is nevertheless an intriguing attempt to show the solidarity between the families in a soldiering community, and the impact of soldiering and war on a small town.
It's hard to fault the film in terms of realism, for we are taken right into the filth and depredation of battle to a degree fully comparable with PLATOON or SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. The use of helicopter pilot characters allows us to get an overview of the conflict is a welcome breath from the claustrophobic, tense, battleground sequences, which are energy sapping in their ferocity and intensity. Wallace's use of light and darkness is also a wonderfully innovative feature, both in the cases of the men on the ground, and the view from the helicopter. Special effects, such as the dropping of napalm and high explosives, are pulled off very effectively as well, but none more so than the authenticity of some of the wounds on the casualties, to such an extent the you often secretly wonder if the men will quietly slit the throats of their tragically maimed brothers in arms, to save them further indignity and suffering.
WE WERE SOLDIERS should not be seen as a microcosm of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, but a degree of political exploration is unavoidable in such a sensitive subject. You cannot help wonder, as the men go into action on behalf of their country, what abstract platitude they went into battle for. The environment that Col. Moore and his men find themselves in is fully believable as hell on earth, even more so than as depicted in Oliver Stone's PLATOON, simply because were are able to see that a seemingly sane, normal, calm world is just on the other end of a radio receiver. The film's biggest strength, that of underlining how men's lives became dominated and identified by their occupation, is also its largest weakness. Because of the depiction of each man as a soldier first and a personality second, it is hard to empathise with any of them, except for scenes in which they encounter each other with soldierly obligations, such as when one platoon of men gets gut off from the main group, and the rest desperately feel the urgency to come to the aid of their embattled comrades.
Despite its unbalanced feel, WE WERE SOLDIERS is effective at portraying the story of one individual unit in one specific confrontation. We need not worry that things seem too easy for the 'good guys,' as the horrors of war are inflicted onto them as much as they are for the enemy, who, despite having lost something like fifteen times killed the number of US soldiers, at the end watch the cavalry leave and wander out onto the battlefield with further re-enforcements. This moment, more than any other, brought home the reality that there are only wars because there are solders to fight them, and in the end, the ground the armies fight for is only as valuable as the blood that soaks into it from the bodies and hearts of the men who do the fighting.
The film attests to be a tribute to the soldiers who fought in the 'Valley of Death,' and despite a feeling that it ignores the wider picture it does that very effectively. WE WERE SOLDIERS may not be everyone's cup of tea, for the reasons of lack of emphasis on the hollow and needless aspects of the waste and sacrifice in Vietnam, but for a film that shows what it is like to be down in the dirt, amidst the blood and mayhem of war, it cannot be faulted.