#19 - We Were Soldiers (2002)
The commentator is Mackubin Thomas Owens , a Vietnam veteran and professor at the Naval War College in Newport, RI.
Most movies about the Vietnam War reflect the derangements of the antiwar Left. This film, based on the memoir by Lt. Col. Hal Moore (played by Mel Gibson), offers a lifelike alternative. It focuses on a fight between an outnumbered U.S. Army battalion and three North Vietnamese regiments in the battle of Ia Drang in 1965. Significantly, it treats soldiers not as wretched losers or pathological killers, but as regular citizens. They are men willing to sacrifice everything to do their duty—to their country, to their unit, and to their fellow soldiers. As the movie makes clear, they also had families. Indeed, their last thoughts were usually about their loved ones back home.
I'm of two minds about Owens' commentary. On the one hand, he's right about how this movie treats the American soldiers. They are citizen-soldiers with families fighting in a distant land.
On the other hand, his snide "derangements of the antiwar Left" comments smacks hollow. Owens talks about not showing the soldiers as "wretched losers or pathological killers", as if that never happened. As if the chaos and utter insanity of Vietnam never produced something like My Lai or left many in a generation of soldiers with mental damage. Owens knows he's essentially lying here, and he does so with a slight misrepresentation.
Ia Drang was the first major battle in Vietnam between the US Army and NVA. It occurred in 1965, well before the Tet Offensive. Well before the Phoenix Program. Well before Hamburger Hill or the Cambodian Incursion. To hold up We Were Soldiers and pretend it is indicative of how the US military was through the end of the USA's involvement in 1973 is like showing Washington at Valley Forge and saying that's how it was for the Continental Army the entire time.
Owens knows this; he's too smart not too. Just like knows that Vietnam was a clusterfuck from the get-go.
But even while he lies about what We Were Soldiers represents, it can be considered a conservative film. It honors the soldiers' service and does a great job of showing the sacrifices and suffering the families go through back at home.
Verdict: Right For The Wrong Reasons
To use this movie as an indictment of Platoon, Hamburger Hill or Full Metal Jacket is patently ridiculous. We Were Soldiers tells a different story about what was, in many ways, a different war than what was to come. But it does honor the soldiers and their families. And in that vein, NRO and Owens are correct about this being a conservative film.
3 comments:
Hell, Black Hawk Down is an anti-war film, but it still very respectful of the soldiers in it's own effort to tell the story of a total clusterfuck of an operation. And I've generally found that war films are generally done as commentary on all wars, not just the one that is the subject of the film.
I mean does this guy think that The Best Years of Our Lives is a left-leaning film just because it doesn't fit in with the jingoistic war films of the time? Like many of the Vietnam war films you reference, TBYOL shows the impact of the horrors of war and could be called a solid precursor to The Deer Hunter, a film I'm sure he feels leans liberal.
Sometimes a story is just a story, and any perceived political leanings are brought to the table only by the viewer.
The only film that comes to mind as a commentary on one war is Wayne's The Green Berets. And it just isn't good at all.
The Best Years of Our Lives is one of the greatest war films ever made. But try to find it on television. That film is still blackballed by media outlets over 60 years later.
Believe it or not, it makes its way onto AMC once or twice a year. I caught it not too long ago there and the only reason I remember it was AMC is I remember the station's host, Osborne, talking about the supporting actor Oscar won by the vet who lost his arms in WWII.
Yeah, it doesn't play much, and they're about the only ones willing to play it. It might have shown last year during one of the war vet's holidays or during the 30 Days of Oscar (I know I didn't catch it as recently as the last month or two, so it could have been as long as a year ago).
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