Ach, Wow iz Brilliant moovie! Let's peek up ze flagz!!!!

Rating: 2/10 (15 August 2002)

"Brilliant!!!" Yeah thats what the test audience of the U.S.A. probably soars , and thus ..badabing..add another dolla dolla for color refilling and all the post production whatnots to make this piece even glossier, maybe just another $40 million or so, you know the kinda money that could stop a war.
Nah, you all know i was just exaggerating right? anyway here we go ; Mel Gibson plays yet another Capt. America larger than life type of character, Col. Hal Moore, the dude who leads 395 U.S.A. Prime Beef to wipe out more than 1700 Viet Congs.
This is what we get from the guy who writes Braveheart and Pearl Harbour, Randall Wallace is most likely for me the latest American Romantist ever hit on Hollywood stools, you could give him a story treatment about a group of cactus thieves in Albania and this guy will pen it so that by the end of the script, a burned out bloodied American Flag will wave in the middle of cactus plantation.
I mean hey, i suspect theres a certain guild association of Writer-Directors that made a deal with The National Security to make movies that propagenies the state of the audiences mind. If the Patriot(2001) could show A bunch of homely Black servants who live burden free within the land of Benjamin "The Ghost" Martin( when in truth the real person this character is based upon is rumoured to be an Indian Massacrist and a slave rapist) then why not show a Black house wife sitting comfortably in an all white Soldiers wife group meeting, remember folks, this is 1964, in some part of America , like the dirty south , blacks are still dragged by chains behind mini trucks if not Lynched by mobs, that scene is as surreal as watching Osama having tea with Pope, a painful cover up ..too painful.
Ah yes,then we are also presented with Untainted troopers, i mean they love their wifes, they got new born babies, they even build hospitals and churches in other countries, i mean if theres any message of lost innocence here it'll be the fact that in 5 to 7 years from where this event starts, them G.I's gonna come home with their Vietnamese mistresses who's spoken english is stereotypically limited to "5 dolla" and "long long time, midori no hooka" , talking about taking the responsibility like a true Platoon Grunt.
So....moving on to the film, we got lines like; "All we got is each other" "I-know-my-buddies-just-been-blown-to-crispy-bits-and-i-just-barely-survive d-2-days-trauma-burying-myself-in-dirt-without-eating-or-defecating,but!!! i want to rejoin the frontier.... sir" and lastly but not strangely... "Tell my wife i lover her". The last was mention for how many times, but with an effort to break the cliche' one of this line is uttered by a Japanese American trooper, brilliant right? i can only stupidly assume that this is a redemptional act of Randall Wallace,who probably feels guilty since he dehumanizes the Nipponese so much in Pearl Habour(2001) and, since he is taking Karate lessons(no..seriously!), he decided to come up with the idea, and what brilliant idea; an Asian, the supposedly central race of the enemy, also exist in the Troopers,hath become the tear jerking navigator of the third act.
Also,since the producers are busy spending their money on 25 million a-piece-Mel-Gibson and buying C4 to destroy every green area that appears on the screen, they can't be bothered to show authenticity of location, therefore they decided to use some embarrasingly fake location(I'm guessing its still inside North America) and plant some plastic mini palm trees, wow.. this, i have to say, is pathetic. My gardener could do a better job producing a the set in my golf field, only i don't have a gardener and i don't play golf.
Mel Gibson have become the master of everyday man's leader, all he need to do is reposition his facial wrinkles and Voila!, Madeliene Stowe is criminally underused, looking very artifical here, she was at her best in Twelve Monkeys(1995), Chris Klein as the young pop, im glad that he didn't get more screen time than he needs to, this guy just doesn't worth the $ for me, that face would forever be remembered as the singing cherry popper in America pie series or the try hard in Rollerball(2002), official Soldier actor Barry Pepper takes the role of a war photographer, and remembering him as the sharp shooter from Saving Private Ryan (1998) i start my stop watch, counting when he is going chuck the Minolta away and pick up the colt to smoke some VC, it was roughly in the 29th minute i think.
Simon the gay a.k.a Greg Kinnear plays Pilot Snakesh*t Crandall, why Snakesh*t? because he flies Lower than snakesh*t..(gee whiz) he got his moments, but thankfully he is not on screen long enough to keep singing.
Lastly the good ole' Sam Elliot as Dirty Dozen-ish Lee-Marvin-on-acid sporting Plumley,an effortless yet effective role as the tough talking veteran who preffers the Handgun rather than the M-16, he also acts as the only person who never dodge bullets yet manage to survive unscatched, i can only assume that the Vc felt sorry for this gramps.
Some good guilty-free Highlight does exist in the film, i wouldn't deny that; the Parallelic resonance mind connection between Col.Moore and the Vietnamese Colonel Nguyen, each reading the moves of each others strategies,or the inner tension that beats whenever Soldier damsels sees cabs arriving in front of their houses(it means they carry telegram of death news), although i'm not sure why didn't the Goverment show more respect and send an army Lackey instead.
Ok, i still think this movie is bad in that "propaganda-ish" kind of way, can't help it though, its an American Movie, with american money, and made mostly for American audience,so its only normal to show a hint of patriotism in a right wing kinda way,an Usbekiztan movie about Usbekiztan troopers againts pygmies invasion will most probably also shows the patriotism brotherhood of Usbekiztanians helding hands whilst ak-47-ing them damn pygmites.
I consider myself a westernized Asian, having been living in western countries most of my life,i do not use chopsticks on my bowl of noodle and i do not practice kung-fu (sometimes caucasians are so curiously friendly, when they learn that you are of Chinese origin, the first thing they will ask is "hey do you know kong-fuu?"), alas not a native english speaker(that explains the dodgy english ppl.), however when i saw my fellow friends (who are Chinese) next to me cheering for the Harrier bombers pulping Vcs to ashes and Mel Gibson riddling holes effortlesly to 199 Vc soldiers rushing towards him(they cheer for Mel and the Bombers of course) i cannot help it but to feel this aching hunch on my shoulder, not because that i have problem with seeing Asian oriented extras being hole punched with CGI fire and squibs so that they can get their paychecks later on, but because i realize how in the long shot this kind of film could unhealthily manipulate the minds of people, leading them to believe whatever biased, dramatized act presented on screen , thus removing the audiences from a more complex truth, hell, talking about the power of media. Truth is indeed scary, i only hope, if theres another "Anti-war" flicks let it be ones which goes more along the line of Thin Red Line(1998), where affection and depth are showed from two opposing sides, and the study of inner humanity is richly embraced, not artificially sugar coated.
ps: Windtalkers is just out on the cinema, after this chunk i doubt it that i want to see Nick Cage wielding two tommy guns, one on each hand, sliding in the air for 5 seconds while sending 99 running Japanese troops to the bowels of Hades, it has become an essential unwritten rule in hollywood films that all historical war villain troops have to run towards the good guys, holding firearms but by any means not using 'em, since screaming in villainish rage is life threatening enough.
1.5 outta 5 stars.
+1.5 for entertainment factor that glorifies the fact that war is not so horrible if shoulder to shoulder male bonding occurs..(sarcasm intended).
-3.5 for all the factors in the film that forced me to write this review which ends up more like a personal contrived opinion.