For my money, Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" is the best movie about the Vietnam War. It is the ultimate cinematic example of war as art; the ideal balance of historical background distorted by literary allusion for aesthetic purpose, or however you want to say it, and with the fattening and deliberately incoherent method master Marlon Brando cast for perfect symbolic and comic relief.
"The Green Berets," likewise, does not depict reality, but it should not be judged punitively for that. Reality is not the purpose of dramatic film. If you want reality, watch a documentary about the war, or better yet volunteer for the going concern in Iraq if they will have you. Chances are if you can walk and keep your sex life reasonably private like GOP Congressmen and mega church preachers try to, they will have you.
To its benefit, "The Green Berets" is no more or less a distortion of the Vietnam War than most Hollywood efforts at telling the "truth" about that conflict; it's just that its hyped, gung ho and pro-war distortion is politically incorrect. Also, it is not set during the post-Tet drugged-out, fragging period when everything fell apart and when Oliver Stone served, the period that came to define American cultural perception of what the entire ill fated U.S. involvement there was like.
This movie does provide something all, or most, other movies about the Vietnam War haven't, and the war itself of course didn't. It's fun to watch from beginning to end. It never fails to entertain. When not bailing out of burning toy helicopters flying around on a wire in an aerodynamically ludicrous death spiral, or shooting charging waves of U.S. Army extras dressed up in black pajamas and Kung Fu straw hats, John and crew hang out in a surreal Da Nang "cabaret." There they are serenaded by a Doris Day quality Vietnamese creole chansonnier while they make contact with an ARVN bigwig's débutante relative they want to enlist as a Mata Hari type seductress in a "daring" secret sex mission to bed and set up a VC general for capture by John's A-Team. Gawky minor "everyman" actor Jim Hutton plays the ideal amiable rogue and thief who steals resourcefully to advance both his private comfort and the unit's mission (a storyline deliberately satirized at one point in Coppola's masterpiece). The earnest side story about the little Vietnamese orphan boy and camp mascot Hamchuck and his "peter-san" tugs at the ethnocentric heart of every heartland American. A short-lived cult actually grew up around the movie's title song and its writer and singer, an actual ex-Special Forces sergeant named Barry Sadler. This enigmatic, forgotten man who performed the ballad on probably every "flyover country" variety show from Jimmy Dean to Ed Sullivan while the novelty lasted actually merits his own biopic movie.
"The Green Berets" is so riveting as a Vietnam movie, and as cultural history, because it is such a curiously misplaced and relentlessly absorbing mind candy variation of all those upbeat, thrilling, and overblown Frank Sinatra, Trever Howard, Alec Guinness (and John Wayne) World War II adventure movies that preceded it. Aldo Ray is in it just to make sure. That's its allusory purpose, and why John Wayne made it. Produced it through his son, co-directed it, and starred in it.
Don't blame John entirely for hapless production values either, such as the scrubby pine barrens of south Alabama and Georgia military reservations subbing for the defoliated bush of "Country." He wanted to film it in Country, just like Mankiewicz had partially done a decade earlier for "The Quiet American," but the U. S. Military John idolized yet never served in quietly persuaded Saigon not to let him film it there. Instead they let him tour some bases in Vietnam safely away from the action, then gave him carte blanch to film it in another occupied, if more benign hellhole of humid languor with just a distant memory of the ravages of civil war. Perhaps if it actually had been shot on location a little reality might have seeped in by mistake, or maybe things were just too hot in Southeast Asia in '68 even for a John Wayne who finally wanted to do some morale boosting duty in a real war zone.
It doesn't matter. Somehow south Alabama and Fort Benning work, considering everything else. Even the closing scene with the wrong-headed sunset works. For all you liberals angry with this movie, right there is your artistic statement about the war, even if John didn't realize he was giving you one. I own the DVD, and am proud to say so.
I have no idea what he thinks about Iraq, but I hope Braveheart Mel sobers up and considers producing and directing an upbeat epic about the current war. It, like "The Green Berets," would never fail to entertain.
"The Green Berets," likewise, does not depict reality, but it should not be judged punitively for that. Reality is not the purpose of dramatic film. If you want reality, watch a documentary about the war, or better yet volunteer for the going concern in Iraq if they will have you. Chances are if you can walk and keep your sex life reasonably private like GOP Congressmen and mega church preachers try to, they will have you.
To its benefit, "The Green Berets" is no more or less a distortion of the Vietnam War than most Hollywood efforts at telling the "truth" about that conflict; it's just that its hyped, gung ho and pro-war distortion is politically incorrect. Also, it is not set during the post-Tet drugged-out, fragging period when everything fell apart and when Oliver Stone served, the period that came to define American cultural perception of what the entire ill fated U.S. involvement there was like.
This movie does provide something all, or most, other movies about the Vietnam War haven't, and the war itself of course didn't. It's fun to watch from beginning to end. It never fails to entertain. When not bailing out of burning toy helicopters flying around on a wire in an aerodynamically ludicrous death spiral, or shooting charging waves of U.S. Army extras dressed up in black pajamas and Kung Fu straw hats, John and crew hang out in a surreal Da Nang "cabaret." There they are serenaded by a Doris Day quality Vietnamese creole chansonnier while they make contact with an ARVN bigwig's débutante relative they want to enlist as a Mata Hari type seductress in a "daring" secret sex mission to bed and set up a VC general for capture by John's A-Team. Gawky minor "everyman" actor Jim Hutton plays the ideal amiable rogue and thief who steals resourcefully to advance both his private comfort and the unit's mission (a storyline deliberately satirized at one point in Coppola's masterpiece). The earnest side story about the little Vietnamese orphan boy and camp mascot Hamchuck and his "peter-san" tugs at the ethnocentric heart of every heartland American. A short-lived cult actually grew up around the movie's title song and its writer and singer, an actual ex-Special Forces sergeant named Barry Sadler. This enigmatic, forgotten man who performed the ballad on probably every "flyover country" variety show from Jimmy Dean to Ed Sullivan while the novelty lasted actually merits his own biopic movie.
"The Green Berets" is so riveting as a Vietnam movie, and as cultural history, because it is such a curiously misplaced and relentlessly absorbing mind candy variation of all those upbeat, thrilling, and overblown Frank Sinatra, Trever Howard, Alec Guinness (and John Wayne) World War II adventure movies that preceded it. Aldo Ray is in it just to make sure. That's its allusory purpose, and why John Wayne made it. Produced it through his son, co-directed it, and starred in it.
Don't blame John entirely for hapless production values either, such as the scrubby pine barrens of south Alabama and Georgia military reservations subbing for the defoliated bush of "Country." He wanted to film it in Country, just like Mankiewicz had partially done a decade earlier for "The Quiet American," but the U. S. Military John idolized yet never served in quietly persuaded Saigon not to let him film it there. Instead they let him tour some bases in Vietnam safely away from the action, then gave him carte blanch to film it in another occupied, if more benign hellhole of humid languor with just a distant memory of the ravages of civil war. Perhaps if it actually had been shot on location a little reality might have seeped in by mistake, or maybe things were just too hot in Southeast Asia in '68 even for a John Wayne who finally wanted to do some morale boosting duty in a real war zone.
It doesn't matter. Somehow south Alabama and Fort Benning work, considering everything else. Even the closing scene with the wrong-headed sunset works. For all you liberals angry with this movie, right there is your artistic statement about the war, even if John didn't realize he was giving you one. I own the DVD, and am proud to say so.
I have no idea what he thinks about Iraq, but I hope Braveheart Mel sobers up and considers producing and directing an upbeat epic about the current war. It, like "The Green Berets," would never fail to entertain.