Not worth the $12. Be a good rental though.

Rating: Null/10 (8 March 2002)

If you want your money's worth who up 30 or 40 minutes late and go to the bathroom when they start delivering telegrams.
As a commentary and an illustration of the attitude and interest of Americans in the conflict in Vietnam, and of the 'We Can't Be Touched' attitude of the American military leadership oof the time, this movie tops any other that I've seen, but from an acting and directorial side, this movie could have been -way- better.
The weakness in this movie stems solely from the poor direction. I'm sure that when Randall Wallace gets some more practice in he'll be a pretty good second unit director, but the studios have to stop giving him so much money. Randall seemingly lost touch with any idea of what over-acting is about and managed to make everyone except for the principal actors into characatures of real people ("No - uh-uh Not MY husband.") His setups were crystal clear ("I'm having a baby today" - classic red shirt line) and his fixation on injuries was gratuitous (lets use a full minute of film to show his burned face as the chopper lifts off - a flash on his face and reaction shots all around would have been more effective, as it was I started examining it to see how the makeup was applied). Top that off with CGI that was poorly scaled, poorly matted, poorly detailed and choppy, it made the whole film look amateurish (measured against the CGI in Starship Troopers and Final Fantasy). Thank god for Mel Gibson, Barry Pepper and Sam Elliot, at least they gave the film some aspect of quality.
The battle scenes were really well developed and provided a good insight into just how confused and chaotic modern warfare can be with its drop and deploy mentality.
If I were to compare this movie to any other, I'd say that it was on par with Thin Red Line, though not as pretentious and with a lot more over-acting. I would have to disagree with those that think to compare it with Saving Private Ryan (a well acted movie whose approach took on the quality of Documentary) or Black Hawk Down (a well acted movie with the quality and approach of a documentary). 10 years ago We Were Soldiers would have been branded Commercial Propoganda, now its just a not-very-good movie.