Could have been better

Rating: 6/10 (23 November 2002)

"We Were Soldiers" was entertaining and instructive but ultimately less satisfying than it might have been. In a way, I prefer pure fiction to movies based on true stories because fiction is fiction. No one implies it actually happened (except the producers of "Fargo"). With movies based on true stories one must always wonder what actually happened and what was changed in the name of dramatic license. I suspect things in "We Were Soldiers" were changed to (A) play up the involvement of the soldiers' wives and (B) to emphasize the whole honorable soldier image. For example, when Lt. Col. Moore exchanges salutes with the Huey pilot at the end of the battle. Maybe it happened. But I doubt it. A similar scenario played out for real during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in World War II. Commander Ernest E. Evans, captain of the USS Johnston, was wounded and conning his damaged ship by standing on the fantail shouting orders to men steering the ship by hand. He looked up and saw the captain of another damaged American ship, a man he knew. And he waved. If they ever make a movie about the Battle of Leyte Gulf (and I hope they do) they'll probably have Evans salute. But I digress. "We Were Soldiers" suffers from the Hollywood version of heroism and honor, which must nowadays include graphic violence a la "Saving Private Ryan." I have mixed feelings about this form of realism. It illustrates the hell of battle much better than the no-blood war movies I grew up with. And that's a service. However, I think it's deliberately overdone in many cases as movie makers see it as an audience-pleaser. An early version of battle realism in the movies occurs in the 1968 film "Anzio." Little or no blood is visible in the movie until Corporal Rabinoff (played by Peter Falk) is killed, at which point the blood gushes from his neck. It works as realism, and it works cinematically because it comes as such a shock. The same goes for profanity. The 1968 movie "Bullitt" is almost profanity-free until the end when Steve McQueen says "Bulls***!" to Robert Vaughn. The line is 10 times more effective because so little profanity has preceded it.