Not realistic

Rating: 5/10 (26 January 2008)

I'd like to comment briefly on this film, in reply to a comment made by Cory Branton-Speak. I would be very surprised if this film gives a realistic picture of the events in Vietnam between '65 and '75. Sure, it has gory battle scenes and as you pointed out, "real last words", but the film gave me a very artificial impression, more than once. Notice how, in every single battle scene, the Americans seem to act rather intelligently, running towards covered areas, ducking, lying down and focus firing (as they should be). The Vietcong, however, show far less rational behaviour. They get up and run into the American's reinforcements or camps, all by themselves, with no covering fire, even when five of their buddies have already done the same thing two minutes earlier. These crash-test dummies are used as background entertainment, while the camera focuses yet again on an enormously interesting conversation of a few Americans. In reality, however, the American troops did not even SEE the Vietcong as often as they seem to in this movie. In the major battles, they often won, but they simply didn't know the territory and the enemy as good as they should have. Add to that the one-year tour of duty that was being employed, and you might get a grasp of the figures: 58,000 casualties. The Americans were losing men and the enemy was invisible. I bid you, think about those things. Mel Gibson has - again - failed miserably as a director. This is NOT a realistic war movie. Period.