This is a horrible film

Rating: 1/10 (25 June 2002)

We Were Soldiers drags out every cliche' in the book. Randall Wallace, the cinematic genius who wrote Pearl Harbor Braveheart and directed Leonardo DiCaprio as two characters in The Man in the Iron Mask, brings us his masterpiece. This is worse than Pearl Harbor even. Bad acting, the combat scenes were really not all that well done compared to both Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down. The movie tries to be different by showing the soldiers at home before they leave for combat. Woo hoo, and for character development, we see that they have kids, cute kids who ask them questions about war. When Mel's daughter asks him what war is, he explains "sometimes bad guys do bad things and America has to stop them." Yes, I know that is not verbaitim, but it exemplifies the film's simplistic attitude. I was waiting for Mel to pick up an American flag and kill the general with it, Patriot style. Speaking of which, this film makes the Patriot look like the most subtle film ever made about warfare. Another thing that Wallace pretends to do is show both sides of the war by cutting in a couple scenes of the Vietnamese and showing that one of their killed soldiers has a girlfriend! Whaoh, that is groundbreaking cinema! Wallace shows his real attitude about showing both sides in a scene with Gibson and Chris Klein in a church. They kneel and pray, and Gibson prays for both sides. But at the end he throws in "and god, what I said about both sides...disregard that, help us kick their asses." Or something like that. I mean, what the hell? This is a movie that claims to honor the memory of the men who died in Vietnam. How exactly does it do that? By showing them get ripped apart and shot, but not by making them into flesh and blood human beings. one guy actually dies saying "at least I died for my country." How so? This is Nam, you died in a war we lost and that we should never have been involved in. And at least twice, a dying character tells a fellow soldier "tell my wife...I loved her." More ludicrous still is the scene when the photographer picks up a gun. Oh wait, it gets more ludicrous when he starts taking pictures...one of the cheesiest montages ever is supposed to display the devestation of the battle. This is a cliched, lame, poorly written and directed film that wants you to believe it is important.