* The Vietnam War divided the nation so savagely during the late-60s and early '70s that it seems only natural for the films that document this conflict to project a certain schizophrenia.
Stanley Kubrick's 1987 Vietnam drama, Full Metal Jacket, is split so cleanly in half that it feels more like two separate stories than one narrative. The first part follows Joker (Matthew Modine) and his fellow Marines as they transform from young men to killing machines in basic training. The second part shows the consequences of this transformation once the fighting starts. (Notably, Joker at one point tries to explain to an officer why he is simultaneously wearing a peace symbol and sporting the words "Born To Kill" on his helmet.) Kubrick's only mistake is that the first half is so thoroughly rendered and unsettling on its own that the second half never quite matches its intensity.
We Were Soldiers, based on an account of a 1965 battle in the Ia Drang Valley, reveals a similar structural split, only the exact opposite is true. It's the relentless combat sequences during the final two-thirds of the movie that compensate for the heavy-handed first act.
The year is 1965, and the U.S. military is planning its initial attack on the People's Army of Vietnam. The man responsible for training the first batch of fighters is Col. Harold G. Moore (Mel Gibson), a tough-as-nails, Harvard-educated soldier whose task is to prepare his boys for battle against an enemy that is fighting in its own backyard with more troops at its disposal.
Moore immediately takes a liking to an idealistic young lieutenant named Jack Geoghegan (Chris Klein), who has a pretty wife (Keri Russell) and a newborn baby at home. Known for his roles in Election and the American Pie movies, Klein has always struck me as a bit too dopey and naïve. But here, his youthful ignorance seems appropriate. Despite all of his training, he really has no idea what he is in for. None of the men do, except perhaps Moore, who is determined not to repeat the mistakes of a French squadron that was massacred by the Vietnamese 10 years earlier.
Much of the dialogue during these scenes in Fort Benning, Ga., is laughable in its earnestness. The characters never seem to be saying their own words as much as mouthing the inflated ideology of first-time director and writer Randall Wallace, the screenwriter behind Braveheart and Pearl Harbor. Thankfully, once the battle begins, the constant clatter of M-16 fire eliminates the need for such dialogue. Wallace's depiction of war is often shocking in its grisliness, with blood spattering everywhere. Borrowing from Saving Private Ryan, Wallace gets the camera so close to the fight that blood even lands directly on the camera lens.
What ultimately keeps "Soldiers" from being as effective and enjoyable as Black Hawk Down, the recent film about a failed U.S. mission in Somalia, is that it is undeniably preachy. But Wallace's moralizing is perhaps forgivable when you consider the specific setting of the conflict in question. The battle of the Ia Drang Valley was the first major engagement between the U.S. and North Vietnamese armies, before the war became a no-win proposition, before the country erupted against it. "Soldiers" tries -- too hard, perhaps -- to reflect this old-fashioned idealism, free of the cynicism toward war that was a byproduct of the Vietnam era. There's no marijuana smoke wafting through the jungle, or Credence and Buffalo Springfield blasting on the soundtrack -- just soldiers fighting for a cause.
We also have to consider who is telling the story. Black Hawk Down is based on a book by Mark Bowden, a reporter who had to complete extensive research to tell his story. His goal was to provide a straightforward, objective account of the battle in Mogadishu.
"Soldiers" is based on Moore's memoir, "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young," co-written with Joseph Galloway, a former army journalist portrayed in the movie by Barry Pepper. These men aren't objective observers trying to recreate events. They were there. They saw the horror. They watched thousands of American boys die terrible deaths.
We Were Soldiers' constant sermonizing might be hard for cynics such as myself to swallow, but you can't really blame Moore, Galloway, and Wallace for seeking redemption for all those whose sacrifice was -- and perhaps still is -- overlooked by a bitterly divided country.
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