My basic thoughts on this film

Rating: Null/10 (23 September 2003)

In America, WWS got good if not great reviews and was viewed upon as a realistic war-movie with a heart, set in the Hollywood tradition (read for example the Roger Ebert review). In Europe the critics were a lot more sceptic about the movie, they saw it as badly timed propaganda, filled with clichés and unnescessary violence. Personally I find myself in-between. The question I asked myself when I saw this movie is: what makes a hero, and under what circumstances is it allright to make war-movies as this which are plainly NOT anti-war. In WWS the message is clear: what makes you a hero is fighting for your comerades (be they American or North Vieatnamese) and your country. So - were the soldiers of Nazi Germany heroes ?? Can you be a hero if you're fighting on the wrong side ?? Today I think most people feel that the US Army's presence in Vietnam was unjust. The south-vietnamese regime they were fighting for was no worse and no better than the north-vietnamese they were fighting against. For the soldier though, this didn't matter. He was, as the movie states, fighting for himself, and his comrades. But for the viewers watching the movie, this SHOULD matter. WWS is not an anti-war movie. It gloryfies armed combat. But combat itself is not glorious, and dying for your comerades is - if it's not in the service of a just cause - meaningless. The both scary and fascinating thing about WWS is that it COULD have been about Nazi soldiers, or north Vietnamese, and it would still have had the same pathos and the same message - which is, again, not about right or wrong, but self-sacrifice.