Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14824 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-04-18
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French, Vietnamese
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 133 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
We Were Soldiers, based on the bestselling account of the battle of La Drang valley at the outset of the Vietnam War, is the latest Mel Gibson Braveheart-esque offering where plot and characterisation, rather than the men who lost their lives in the conflict, are the most serious casualties. The story follows Lt. Colonel Hal Moore (Gibson) and his platoon through a brief spell at boot camp and then into the battle itself.

In place of the moral ambiguity offered by, say, Platoon or Hamburger Hill, We Were Soldiers presents us with archetypes. Gibson's family man colonel is almost a parody of Patton, a man with so much heart you wonder how he manages to get up in the morning. He's a good Catholic, loves his men, and tells us that he's the first one on the battlefield and the last one off. And if that self-eulogising wasn't enough we have the slow-mo, heavily scored last-one-into-the-helicopter moment to prove it. In uncomfortably jingoistic contrast, the commander of the Viet Cong never leaves his cavernous headquarters as he sends his faceless foot soldiers to their death.

What saves the film are Ryan Hurst's performance as the stoic Sergeant Ernie Savage and Barry Pepper's non-combatant journalist who gets caught up in the action and has to fight to survive, both of whom inject some much-needed humanity into the action. Otherwise there is so little character development before the offensive that you find yourself squinting at the screen trying to work out who just bought the bullet when you really should be feeling every gunshot. Braveheart scribe Randall Wallace's direction is heavy handed and over sentimental--relentless violence masquerades as poignant remembrances of the futility of war--and the only time it ever approaches genuine emotion is the scene where the wives begin receiving telegrams detailing their husband's deaths. When measured against Hamburger Hill and Full Metal Jacket, We Were Soldiers doesn't even deserve to be in the same platoon. --Kristen Bowditch

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

Feature length commentary from Director Randall Wallace
Ten deleted scenes with optional commentary
"Getting It Right" making-of documentary
TV and Radio spots
Theatrical trailer
Ratio: 16:9

Synopsis
In 1965, 400 American troops faced an ambush by 2,000 enemy troops in the Ia Drang Valley (also known as the Valley of Death), in one of the most gruesome fights of the Vietnam War. WE WERE SOLDIERS is a detailed recreation of this true story--of the strategies, obstacles, and human cost faced by the troops that participated. The story focuses on the lieutenant colonel that led the attack, Hal Moore (Mel Gibson), and a civilian reporter who accompanied them, Joseph Galloway (Barry Pepper), as well as a number of other soldiers who were involved.

This is an unusual Vietnam film in that it also shows the North Vietnamese perspective on the battle; their leader Lieutenant General Nguyen Huu An (Don Duong) is depicted as a brave soldier and smart commander. And in addition to the many gory battlefield sequences--which seem to have been influenced by SAVING PRIVATE RYAN--we also see how the carnage of war affects those left behind, the soldiers' wives and children. Ultimately this is a moving anti-war film, which, by sticking close to the true stories of real soldiers, very effectively brings home the overwhelming horror of war.

Customer Reviews

Hysterically Bad
Must be a strong contender for the most dreadful Vietnam war movie ever. Go for Platoon, Apocalypse Now or something (anything!) else.

Flawed, Unoriginal, but quality entertainment.
As with the title, this films has flaws that should embarrass the makers more than the Vietnam War embarrassed the White House. A made for TV Movie in some parts and the rest is a seen it all before.
However! That is not to say there's no point in watching. It made remarkably uncomfortable viewing. This film covers the first military action of the States in Vietnam, and from the off they are screwed in their strategy and execution (Gibson does his best to show his character knows the government's naivety and is maybe making a poor attempt at modern day anti-Iraq propaganda perhaps?) of this battle and the war as a whole.
It does stay with you seeing the first of thousands of Americans to die in what was to be an unwinnable war. And once the action gets going it really is rather good.
Certainly not up there with the best war movies for quality, but makes you think as much as they do anyway.
So, 4 stars which it just about manages, but is being held back by too many old hat tricks of the trade that went out of fashion in the nineties.

VERY old fashioned
The story centers around one of the big turning points in the Vietnam War - the point at which the NVA join the Viet Cong in fighting the South Vietnamese and their American allies. The film basically follows the lead up to the major battle, occasionally with the focus switching to the wives back home.

The battles are well shot and staged. The NVA aren't portrayed as commun-nazis (although they do get shot down in storm-trooper like waves). The problem is the mind-numbing, simplistic nature of the script. It's like watching a WW2 film from over 50 years ago - simple, straight forward heroics, no moral ambiguity, no questions or issues dwelled over. Everyone knows what they are fighting for, no-one has any doubts. The Americans keep up their spirits with folksy good humour whilst fighting wave after wave of NVA. Almost each and every time the wily Americans outwit the NVA, who get killed in their thousands.

Once or twice I shouted at the telly during the film. One of them was when the wives back home are having some sort of coffee morning. One tells the rest of the group how amusing it was that the local laundromat only allowed you to wash your white clothes, because they had a sign outside the door that said "Whites Only". The rest of the women looked embarrassed, especially for the token black wife. The woman who told the sorry then realises the significance of the "whites only" sign, and comments how terrible that was, and apologises to the black wife. The black wife is all sass, saying how her and her man don't need respect from people like that. She does everything but wag her finger and say "girlfriend" in fact. She then mentions something about how proud she she is of her man "and what he is fighting for".

This scene in the film raises two problems. Firstly, we are expected to believe that an American woman in the 60's wouldn't know what a "Whites Only" sign was referring to. What we have here is probably the most ham-fisted attempt by scriptwriters to deal with historical political issues I have seen in a while. No race riots, no segregation, lynching, or anything else. The 'inconvenience' of being a black woman in 60's America solved through some very 21st century sass. You want political simplicity, here it is by the cartload.

The other issue is the line "and what he is fighting for". What exactly were the Americans fighting for in Vietnam? Again, the film doesn't deal with that issue either. It doesn't even bother. As they are all such good, decent, Christian men, they must be on the right side by default, so we don't need to ask what the are fighting for. It's rather hard to give this film any credence at all when there has been a raft of excellent Vietnam films, films which deal with the moral ambiguity, films which ask questions and offer few answers; Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Born on the Fourth of July, Apocalypse Now.

I don't know if this a reactionary, jingoistic film as I have read about, but it's certainly not a film that will educate you or make you think about anything differently. It just about entertains. Watch it if it would come as a surprise to you that fighting in a war is scary and dangerous - that's probably about all I can say about it.