Seriously, if you ever need a demonstration on why the US Military did not "prevail" in Vietnam dig out THE GREEN BERETS with John Wayne. On one plane of consideration it may be the best depiction of the way the war was being fought, which in this case was like a glorified version of THE ALAMO or FORT APACHE.
Once you get down to brass tacks this is just another large scale war movie -- You've got John Wayne swaggering around, larger than life, the lovable Hamchunk with his even more lovable doggie pal, the misfit "Scrounger" with his bottles of Scotch and designer pajamas, Mr. Sulu from "Star Trek" aping an uncompromising ARVN officer who rigs his own troops' foxholes with explosives under the anticipation of them turning traitor, a goofy kid who's dying wish is to have a toilet named after him, and so on. The problem is of course that Vietnam was it's own war and the tone of the film's 1950s era flag waving glory boy jingoistic pap comes off as nothing short of absurd, replete with wonderfully boneheaded touches like forests of Georgia blue pines, southern boy extras made up to play Charlie who nonetheless still look like good ole' boys, and even a closing shot of the sun setting over the Sea of China. Which bordered Vietnam on the eastern side.
Notice however that I didn't say that this movie is instructive as to why we "lost", because we didn't lose. The US Military basically won every major combat engagement they participated in -- we had no Dien Bien Phu that drove us from the country in shame. Our involvement in the war came to an end when the press declared the war unwinnable & congress cut off the funding. Sound familiar? They are trying to do it again now, and such a tactic is just as ineffective as our inability to understand Charlie. We won every battle but we lost the war, and this movie kind of gives you a rough estimation as to why.
What it doesn't do, however, is fit the contemporary template of what a movie about Vietnam should be like in terms of look, tone, and attitude. APOCALYPSE NOW, THE DEER HUNTER, PLATOON and FULL METAL JACKET set that template for the decades that came after them, but THE GREEN BERETS was made at a time before. You almost expect Davy Crockett to come striding out of the woods, and the film even has time for a nice musical number in a swanky Da Nang nightclub. It's not that the people who made the film were squares or spouting propaganda so much as the culture hadn't finished going through the changes that would define the 1960s and spawn the filmmakers who would get to set their feet in the story cement of how that decade's war would be told.
It's not that Wayne's depiction of Vietnam was inaccurate (i.e. there actually are pine trees in Vietnam) but rather that the method of telling the story of how the war was being waged was decidedly conventional. This movie really isn't any different than STARTSHIP TROOPERS, which in itself was trying to mimic the form of a big, sprawling, slightly lunkheaded war epic of the 50s and 60s, of which THE GREEN BERETS is probably one of the last examples thereof. After Vietnam war was depicted with a kind of gloomy, introspective sense of guilt that is completely absent from Wayne's vision.
That's because it didn't exist yet when this film was made, and you can't fault a movie for being true to it's times even when the ones that came after it may have resonated with the current cultural gestalt. This is in many ways an alternate view of Vietnam of the kind that you can only glean from surviving Department of Defense information films on the progress & accomplishments of our military forces in subduing the communist threat in Southeast Asia. Look for a cheapo DVD collection called "Combat Vietnam" to see what I mean, like Wayne's film they celebrate our armed forces rather condemning them for doing what they did better than any other military on the face of the planet.
Wait a minute -- progress? Accomplishments? The US Military?? Yes. We never lost a battle, and I admire this movie for being willing to say such without flinching, even if the end result didn't quite work out in anyone's favor.
5/10; Immune to criticism really, but still a great John Wayne movie.
Once you get down to brass tacks this is just another large scale war movie -- You've got John Wayne swaggering around, larger than life, the lovable Hamchunk with his even more lovable doggie pal, the misfit "Scrounger" with his bottles of Scotch and designer pajamas, Mr. Sulu from "Star Trek" aping an uncompromising ARVN officer who rigs his own troops' foxholes with explosives under the anticipation of them turning traitor, a goofy kid who's dying wish is to have a toilet named after him, and so on. The problem is of course that Vietnam was it's own war and the tone of the film's 1950s era flag waving glory boy jingoistic pap comes off as nothing short of absurd, replete with wonderfully boneheaded touches like forests of Georgia blue pines, southern boy extras made up to play Charlie who nonetheless still look like good ole' boys, and even a closing shot of the sun setting over the Sea of China. Which bordered Vietnam on the eastern side.
Notice however that I didn't say that this movie is instructive as to why we "lost", because we didn't lose. The US Military basically won every major combat engagement they participated in -- we had no Dien Bien Phu that drove us from the country in shame. Our involvement in the war came to an end when the press declared the war unwinnable & congress cut off the funding. Sound familiar? They are trying to do it again now, and such a tactic is just as ineffective as our inability to understand Charlie. We won every battle but we lost the war, and this movie kind of gives you a rough estimation as to why.
What it doesn't do, however, is fit the contemporary template of what a movie about Vietnam should be like in terms of look, tone, and attitude. APOCALYPSE NOW, THE DEER HUNTER, PLATOON and FULL METAL JACKET set that template for the decades that came after them, but THE GREEN BERETS was made at a time before. You almost expect Davy Crockett to come striding out of the woods, and the film even has time for a nice musical number in a swanky Da Nang nightclub. It's not that the people who made the film were squares or spouting propaganda so much as the culture hadn't finished going through the changes that would define the 1960s and spawn the filmmakers who would get to set their feet in the story cement of how that decade's war would be told.
It's not that Wayne's depiction of Vietnam was inaccurate (i.e. there actually are pine trees in Vietnam) but rather that the method of telling the story of how the war was being waged was decidedly conventional. This movie really isn't any different than STARTSHIP TROOPERS, which in itself was trying to mimic the form of a big, sprawling, slightly lunkheaded war epic of the 50s and 60s, of which THE GREEN BERETS is probably one of the last examples thereof. After Vietnam war was depicted with a kind of gloomy, introspective sense of guilt that is completely absent from Wayne's vision.
That's because it didn't exist yet when this film was made, and you can't fault a movie for being true to it's times even when the ones that came after it may have resonated with the current cultural gestalt. This is in many ways an alternate view of Vietnam of the kind that you can only glean from surviving Department of Defense information films on the progress & accomplishments of our military forces in subduing the communist threat in Southeast Asia. Look for a cheapo DVD collection called "Combat Vietnam" to see what I mean, like Wayne's film they celebrate our armed forces rather condemning them for doing what they did better than any other military on the face of the planet.
Wait a minute -- progress? Accomplishments? The US Military?? Yes. We never lost a battle, and I admire this movie for being willing to say such without flinching, even if the end result didn't quite work out in anyone's favor.
5/10; Immune to criticism really, but still a great John Wayne movie.