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While the Vietnam War remains a haunting and troubling chapter in American history, it has inspired a wide range of cinema, including some great films (Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.) We are drawn to the muddy moral dilemmas of the war. Should America have become involved? Was our objective worth the cost of so many lives? Was it a civil war that we should have left alone? What did we accomplish? Why do so many veterans tell horror stories not only about the combat with a resourceful enemy, but about the misbehavior of American soldiers?

We Were Soldiers, the new film written and directed by Randall Wallace (who wrote Braveheart), may be distinguished as the Vietnam film devoid of any politics. It stands out from the pack of dark, cynical, and bleak portraits of the war, focusing on the virtues of men who will follow orders bravely. We watch the heroic Colonel Hal Moore lead a group of youngsters into the first major land battle in Vietnam, the bloody and chaotic disaster in the I Drang, "the Valley of Death." As they sacrifice their lives, these Americans look more like the heroes of John Wayne films than the frightened fighters of Apocalypse Now or the soul-searching boys of The Thin Red Line. But were they really, as the film claims, giving their lives "for their country"? Why did this battle have to happen?

The movie doesn't say. This avoidance of political details has disgruntled some critics. "Essentially, We Were Soldiers assimilates Vietnam into the Second World War," argues David Denby (The New Yorker). "It recapitulates the many movies … which portrayed the Americans as good people fighting for a just cause. Only this time no one says what the cause is. Communism is never mentioned. Neither is China or Russia, and there's no sign of … the South Vietnamese. 'I'm glad I can die for my country,' one young soldier says, his face turning white as the life drains out of him. That unlikely line indicates what [the film] believes in—dying well as an American, and making a speech about it." Jeffrey Wells (Reel.com) says the film recalls Gibson's The Patriot, this time glorifying the "invaders who want to dominate their country culturally and economically."

Others, however, praise the central lesson of the film—that however suspicious the political context, American soldiers care about each other in a way that provokes them to bravery and selflessness. This is a story about how men worked together to achieve difficult objectives, defend their honor, and defend each other. Further, many praise Wallace's respectful and even compassionate perspectives on the wives and children of the soldiers and on the Vietnamese soldiers "who died by our hand."

Some are also impressed at the emphasis on faith. Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly) writes: "Always grateful for instances in which expressions of specific religious faith are incorporated naturally in movies like the everyday occurrences they can be, rather than hysterically like the unidentified spiritual woowoo Hollywood usually thinks they have to be, I'm particularly refreshed by the delicacy with which Wallace and Gibson demonstrate the effect of Moore's Catholic faith on his character."

Religious press critics were particularly pleased with the film, largely because of its favorable portrayal of men with spiritual discipline.

Phil Boatwright (The Movie Reporter) complains about the recent proliferation of war films, but then adds, "If I were to recommend a war film, this would be the one." He praises Gibson's portrayal of Col. Moore as a passionately religious and prayerful man: "He reminded me of what King David might have been like when heading his armies." But Boatwright also cautions us, "The violence here is even more explicit [than in Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan.]. Yet, because the filmmaking is so involving you simply can't look away."

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March (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46