We Were Soldiers
Grade: B-
Verdict: These men deserve a medal, but their movie could use a
rewrite.
Details: Starring Mel Gibson, Sam Elliott and Chris Klein. Directed by
Randall Wallace. Rated R for graphic war violence and
strong language. 2 hours, 17 minutes.
Rate it: Write your own review
Review: As a tribute to the brave men who fought in the 1965 battle
of Ia Drang, the first major conflict of the Vietnam War, Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers" is excellent.
As a movie, it's less so. Based on the book "We Were Soldiers Once
. . . and Young" by Lt. Gen. Harold (Hal) G. Moore (Ret.) and
photojournalist Joseph L. Galloway, "We Were Soldiers" is much like
Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down" in that it cares more about soldiers
than politics. This seems to be the new way of doing war movies, be
they concerned with Vietnam or other conflicts. The point is not to
make a film that reflects on the greater issues of a war, but to make
one that focuses on the human side, on the guys who threw the grenades
and took the bullets.
The problem for "We Were Soldiers" is that "Black Hawk Down" got there
first. And it got there better.
True, there are some overwhelming scenes of frontline carnage —
bullets ripping through throats, incinerated GIs, etc. But the story
line seems almost quaint. Take away the effects and "We Were Soldiers"
could have been filmed several decades ago. And while the argument can
be made, this is really how it happened, this is what was actually
said, the counter-argument must be made, yes, but couldn't we have been
shown all that more inventively?
Writer/director Randall Wallace gets the part of Moore's book that
says, essentially, no one hates a war more than the men who fight in
it. What he doesn't get is how to translate that truism into kinetic
piece of work that burns with the passion of Moore's best seller. "We
Were Soldiers" cares, but it cares in such predictable ways.
Gibson plays Moore, a Harvard-educated career soldier whom we meet as
he, his wife, Julie (Madeleine Stowe), and their kids are settling into
their new home at Fort Benning. After some perfunctory home-front
scenes that introduce us to other soldiers (gruff Sarge Sam Elliott,
brave young guy Chris Klein) and show Moore as a dedicated family man
and sexy hubby, the film moves to Vietnam. His division is mordantly
named the 7th Cavalry (that was the name of Gen. George Armstrong
Custer's unit), which gives Moore more than his share of bad
psychic-hotline vibes. But his real worry is his senior staff, who
don't seem to know what they're doing.
That's how he and his men are dropped into a place called Landing Zone
X-Ray, where they are to engage the enemy. "Engage" seems too mild a
word, however, to describe the situation: Moore's 400 soldiers are
going against 2,000 Viet Cong.
Plotwise, that's about all there is to it. Wallace approaches the
ensuing slaughter with blood-on-the-camera-lens (literally) verve. It's
very impressive, but after a bit, you realize you can hear the whizzing
bullets and the bomb explosions better than you can the dialogue.
Wallace shrouds the cast in a near blanket anonymity: We mostly know
where Gibson is and we generally know where Elliott is and we recognize
hotshot pilot Greg Kinnear each time he makes a death-defying copter
landing to haul off the wounded. Everyone else is special-effects
fodder.
The most gut-wrenching scenes in "We Were Soldiers" occur thousands of
miles from the battle front. They happen back in Fort Benning, where
the wives, who've mostly been weeping and vacuuming, begin to receive
those "We regret to inform you" telegrams.
Yet, just as her husband rises to the occasion over there, Julie and
her best friend, Barbara ("Felicity's" Keri Russell), do the same
stateside. They assume the heartbreaking task of delivering the
telegrams themselves. That's what gets to you. More than the
blown-apart bodies and blood-drenched limbs, it's the faces of these
women that jolt you into realizing the appalling toll of war.
There are two Randall Wallaces. One wrote the stirring "Braveheart."
The other wrote the squishy platitudes of "Pearl Harbor." "We Were
Soldiers" sticks us with the "Pearl Harbor" version. This is the sort
of movie where, the minute a young GI puts on his newborn's baby
bracelet, you know you're going to see Gibson lift it off his dead
wrist sometime in the film's last half-hour.
Gibson deserves credit for trying to play a different kind of hero.
Moore is military through and through, a man who respects the system
even when it betrays him. There's none of the roguish twinkle of
William Wallace or the "Lethal Weapon" guy. And while "twinkle" isn't
exactly the word for Mad Max, by the book isn't his style, either.
Gibson plays Moore "Yes, Sir!" straight. The result isn't a disaster —
Gibson can do gung-ho with the best of 'em — but it is something of an
ill fit. You keep missing that essential quality that makes Gibson
Gibson. He's always functioned best as an outsider of sorts; that's
what gives a distinctive texture to his performances, a bad-boy thrill.
The star even looks different. His face is as military square — short
haircuts do that — as Jack Nicholson's visage in "A Few Good Men.
Gibson succeeds in making Moore someone you would follow into battle,
but it's an almost generically good performance. You could just as
easily see Russell Crowe or Bruce Willis in the part.
It's as if the star and the director were so concerned with honoring
Moore and his men that they forgot to pay attention to making the movie
that would truly do that. "We Were Soldiers" is stirring in an
uncomplicated way. It's moving in an uncomplicated way. It's melancholy
in an uncomplicated way. And yet the point of the picture would seem to
be that things are always more complicated than mere good guys and bad
guys, good wars and bad wars. Honor and courage may sound like simple
ideas, but they never are. The men of the 7th Cavalry show us that in a
million ways. The movie about them doesn't.
— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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