We Were Soldiers
in a Sub par Film

It appears that “Pearl Harbor” screenwriter Randall Wallace is up to his old tricks again in “We Were Soldiers”, another film based around a single battle in an American war. It mimics “Platoon” and strives to be as significant as “Black Hawk Down”, but fails to create the intensity and gravity of either of those great motion pictures.

November 1965: After President Johnson’s decision to increase the number of troops brought into Vietnam, Lt. Col. Hal Moore (Mel Gibson), a devout family man, brings his battalion to the Southeast personally. The battalion includes Moore’s right-hand man, Sgt.-Maj. Basil Plumley, a hard-nosed, war-hardened officer, Bruce Crandall (Greg Kinnear), a talented pilot, and Jack Geoghegan (Chris Klein), recently a father. However, they are stationed in the Ia Drang Valley, and they are quick to enter a long, heated battle with the Viet Cong Army. The Americans are surrounded by the enemy. Heavy casualties are expected; but they are determined to fight their way through the troops. The company is soon joined by Joe Galloway (Barry Pepper), a combat photographer who finds himself caught in the middle. Meanwhile, back home, Hal’s wife Julie (Madeleine Stowe) takes upon the thankless job of handing out telegrams informing her friends around the neighborhood of the deaths of their husbands.

“We Were Soldiers” does not provide us with the sheer terror or emotional backlash of the Vietnam War. Vietnam is a delicate subject that demands only the most detailed and compassionate view, and instead of developing its characters in a way that we can care about them, this film would rather employ a number of tired film conventions, such as slow-motion when a character is killed. The film is not daring by any means, and presents us with its points in a somewhat pompous, self-important manner, as if we should be surprised by what we’ve already heard.

There are a few bright spots, however. The lead performances are strong, with Gibson, Elliott and Pepper at their best (under the circumstances), giving each character the right range of emotions. Also, the actors’ chemistry onscreen helps make their dialogue interesting and believable.

My hopes for “We Were Soldiers” were very high, perhaps unreasonably so. However, the movie refuses to be anything more than a run-of-the-mill war flick filled with clichés, and should be treated as such.