We Were Soldiers (Widescreen Edition)

This movie is a tribute to our Vietnam Veterans who have gone without thanks for far too long. I hope this is the beginning to a new era for them.


A patriotic tribute   June 24, 2002
 2 out of 5 found this review helpful

This was an excellent movie. Its about time that Hollywood produced a movie that depicts the men who fought in Vietnam not as drug addicted, massacring imperialists, but as couragous young Americans who fought for something larger than themselves.
Too often popular culture denigrates the Vietnam war as something that was completely needless and a unworthy venture. However, when looked at more carefully,the Vietnam war easily could have come to a more successful conclusion if the campus activists and Jane Fonda's of America had not assured the North Vietnamese government that we were not fighting as a nation united. Leave it to Mel Gibson to make a movie that finally gives the veterans a fair shake. Definitely worth watching.


Good. Very Good   June 24, 2002
 1 out of 5 found this review helpful

First of all, i want to say this movie compares to the likes of Saving Pivate ryan and Black Hawk Down, But Patton beat the pants off of it. I think this Movie accurately captures the Battle of Ia Drang Valley (dont think i dont know what i'm talking about, i did a VERY BIG report on it.)it even gives information of how it started (the massacre of french troops in the beginning. and it also captures the emotions of the wives of the men killed in battle. When i saw it in the theatre, during that emotional scene where Moore's (gibson) wife hands out those dreaded First Union Telegrams, the women in the theatre burst in to tears. The action lasts a long time and accurateley portrayes the taticis Officers used, including the broken arrow, which misfired.I say buy this if you like War movies (But if you are looking for a really great war movie check out Patton!)


Perhaps the most realistic modern battle scenes on film   June 22, 2002
 114 out of 124 found this review helpful

This is war and it truly is hell. Outnumbered on the field and backed by the politically driven Defense Department of the time, one battalion finds itself outnumbered and fighting for its life in the jungles of Vietnam.

A recent reviewer here mistook what this movie was about. It is NOT about America's war in Vietnam and all the ideology behind it. Its about a battle that occurred in the early years of that war between a new type of specialized fighting unit and a very determined enemy. America wanted to engage the enemy for the first time and this is the battle. The only politics involved here is the decision not to declare a National Emergency thus allowing the Army's most experienced soldiers to leave at the end of their enlistments, when ironically they were most needed. This movie is about a battalion commander training his unit, getting orders and shipping off to war. It also gives an excellent look at what the wives had to endure during that terrible time.

If one wants to look at the politics of this war, check out HBO's Path to War. Path to War shows the speech were LBJ sends this unit, the Air Cav, to Vietnam and the political reasoning behind it. It goes through LBJ's escalation and McNamera's change of heart on the winnablity of the war. Highly recommend it.

Anyway, in realism this ranks up there with Saving Private Ryan. By reading the book you get a much better grasp of what happened as well as the story not told of what happened at LZ Albany. That encounter was even a worse then what happened at LZ X-Ray.

All told this movie gives the feel of how horrible, horrowing and confusing first-hand combat can be. One decision can lead to winning the day, or as the movie shows, getting yourself cut off and most of your men killed. As for accuracy to what occurred, a group of soldiers that were there appeared on The History Channel's "Hollywood vs History" program and they concurred that it was 75-80% factual. 20 - 25% Hollywood. That's probably a good ratio indeed. Oh, and the little American Flag at the end was real, not Hollywood. And Sam Elliot deserves an Academy Award for his portrait of American Hero Sgt. Major Basil Plumley.


Take Your Son   June 22, 2002
 7 out of 9 found this review helpful

Finally a Viet Nam war movie that doesn't treat us like freaks. This is not an anti-war movie. It simply shows how it was from the infantryman's point of view. Any so called intellectual that tries to make it more, just doesn't get it. I saw it by myself the first time, the second time I took my twenty-seven year old son. He was shocked at what we went through. Buy it. Buy several copies.