We Were Soldiers
Marc Blucas week continues here at Emily's LiveJournal with a review of "We Were Soldiers" featuring the fine Mr. Blucas. I went to see it tonight with my mother and father. It's not what you'd call an uplifting picture. And for those finnatics of you who don't enjoy war movies but just want to see Marc Blucas, wait for video. It's very bloody and you might just want to skip the parts he is not in.
I haven't read the book by Hal Moore and Joe Galloway (who are played in the movie by Mel Gibson and Barry Pepper respectively) but Sharon has and she clued me in to what happens to Marc's charater. He plays Lt. Herrick, who screws up majorly and gets the majority of his platoon and his own self killed early on. He dies within the first hour of the movie. (It's about 2 and half hours long) Marc actually gets a lot more screen time than lines. There are a lot of shots of him just looking pensieve and stuff, as there are of many of the soldiers. Basically the only lines he speaks are him yelling at his men in training, him yelling at his men during the war and his death scene. You don't really get a great feel for his character except for one part where Moore(Gibson) comments on him and Geoghegan(Chris Klein). They were both officers who arrive at the base a little while after Moore does. Moore says that Geoghegan is a real leader, and a good soldier while Herrick is out for medals. He's too impulsive and that's what gets him killed.
Now you'd think that because he's a good leader and all Geoghegan would make it. But he doesn't. It's much easier to count the men who don't die than it is to count the one's who do. Basically, every one of Moore's men except for Plumley(Sam Elliott) and the pilots(most notably, Greg Kinnear) get dead by the end of the flick.
As I said before, it's really bloody and parts of it are pretty disturbing. The one part that made me literally cringe is when Moore orders planes to come and bomb the moutain, one misses the target and hits the American soldiers. There's one shot where Galloway, who is a reporter who stupidly goes in with the soldiers, is asked to carry one of the men to a helicopter and when he goes to grab his legs, the skin peels away from the bone. My Dad said it was the bloodiest war movie he ever saw, and he saw "Black Hawk Down." I heard that was worse though...
The gore aside, some of the shots are really beautiful particularly some of the helicopters flying over Vietnam. They're sweeping moutains and hilly terrain. I think they show this for effect, because as soon as the soldiers touch down, that lovely land gets blown to all hell. Still, it's got really good cinematography.
I didn't much care for Mel Gibson as Moore. I thought he over acted a lot. But everyone else was pretty good. Sam Elliott was funny at times. His character is crochety and sarcastic which provides some laughs early on.
One thing "We Were Soldiers" tries to do, which most other war movies don't, is to give some glimpses into the enemy's point of view. There are scenes of the Vietnamese general giving orders. He is pretty much the "evil" guy in the movie, since they say he wants to massacre Americans like he did the French. But at the end, when he's looking over all the bodies of his soldiers he says, "What a tragedy." And one nameless soldier who tries to bayonet Moore gets a girlfriend who cries over him at the end. But pretty much, you want to see the commie bastards fry. Afterall, the story is told from Moore's point of view, and you can't feel sorry for the other guy when you're blowin' 'em up.
One different (and nice) thing they do, is before the credits of all the people who worked on the movie roll, they give the names of all the soldiers who died there and where they came from. Herrick was from California, just FYI.
I'd recommend it if you like war movies. If you don't, it's kind of hard to take. I think it would have been better if Mel Gibson hadn't played the lead though. He's really the only name actor it and I thought he was the worst.
I haven't read the book by Hal Moore and Joe Galloway (who are played in the movie by Mel Gibson and Barry Pepper respectively) but Sharon has and she clued me in to what happens to Marc's charater. He plays Lt. Herrick, who screws up majorly and gets the majority of his platoon and his own self killed early on. He dies within the first hour of the movie. (It's about 2 and half hours long) Marc actually gets a lot more screen time than lines. There are a lot of shots of him just looking pensieve and stuff, as there are of many of the soldiers. Basically the only lines he speaks are him yelling at his men in training, him yelling at his men during the war and his death scene. You don't really get a great feel for his character except for one part where Moore(Gibson) comments on him and Geoghegan(Chris Klein). They were both officers who arrive at the base a little while after Moore does. Moore says that Geoghegan is a real leader, and a good soldier while Herrick is out for medals. He's too impulsive and that's what gets him killed.
Now you'd think that because he's a good leader and all Geoghegan would make it. But he doesn't. It's much easier to count the men who don't die than it is to count the one's who do. Basically, every one of Moore's men except for Plumley(Sam Elliott) and the pilots(most notably, Greg Kinnear) get dead by the end of the flick.
As I said before, it's really bloody and parts of it are pretty disturbing. The one part that made me literally cringe is when Moore orders planes to come and bomb the moutain, one misses the target and hits the American soldiers. There's one shot where Galloway, who is a reporter who stupidly goes in with the soldiers, is asked to carry one of the men to a helicopter and when he goes to grab his legs, the skin peels away from the bone. My Dad said it was the bloodiest war movie he ever saw, and he saw "Black Hawk Down." I heard that was worse though...
The gore aside, some of the shots are really beautiful particularly some of the helicopters flying over Vietnam. They're sweeping moutains and hilly terrain. I think they show this for effect, because as soon as the soldiers touch down, that lovely land gets blown to all hell. Still, it's got really good cinematography.
I didn't much care for Mel Gibson as Moore. I thought he over acted a lot. But everyone else was pretty good. Sam Elliott was funny at times. His character is crochety and sarcastic which provides some laughs early on.
One thing "We Were Soldiers" tries to do, which most other war movies don't, is to give some glimpses into the enemy's point of view. There are scenes of the Vietnamese general giving orders. He is pretty much the "evil" guy in the movie, since they say he wants to massacre Americans like he did the French. But at the end, when he's looking over all the bodies of his soldiers he says, "What a tragedy." And one nameless soldier who tries to bayonet Moore gets a girlfriend who cries over him at the end. But pretty much, you want to see the commie bastards fry. Afterall, the story is told from Moore's point of view, and you can't feel sorry for the other guy when you're blowin' 'em up.
One different (and nice) thing they do, is before the credits of all the people who worked on the movie roll, they give the names of all the soldiers who died there and where they came from. Herrick was from California, just FYI.
I'd recommend it if you like war movies. If you don't, it's kind of hard to take. I think it would have been better if Mel Gibson hadn't played the lead though. He's really the only name actor it and I thought he was the worst.