We Were Soldiers

“I wonder what Custer was thinking,” Lt. Col. Hal Moore says, “when he realized he’d moved his men into slaughter.” Sgt. Maj. Plumley, his right-hand man, replies, “Sir, Custer was a (insert the P word here).” There you have the two emotional mediums of “We Were Soldiers,” the 2002 story of the first major land battle in the Vietnam War, late in 1965. Moore, played by Mel Gibson, is a family man and a Harvard graduate with a background in international relations. Plumley, played by Sam Elliott, is an Army lifer, hard, brave and hard-edged. They are both just as good as war leaders are. However, by the end of the first fight, they see they may be in the wrong war.

The reference to Custer is not an accident. Moore leads the First Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry, Custer’s brigade. “We will ride into battle and this will be our horse,” Moore says, standing in front of a helicopter. About 400 of his platoon go into battle in the Ia Drang Valley, called the “Valley of Death,” and are encircled by about 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Moore sees this is a trap, and even in the film’s beginning moments he reads about this sort of maneuver used by the Vietnamese against the French a few years earlier.

Roger Ebert said in his review, “"We Were Soldiers," like "Black Hawk Down," is a film in which the Americans do not automatically prevail in the style of traditional Hollywood war movies.” Ia Drang cannot be said was a defeat, since Moore’s men fought valiantly and having so many damages but killing way more Viet Cong. However, it is not a victory. Ebert labels, “it's more the curtain-raiser of a war in which American troops were better trained and better equipped, but outnumbered, out maneuvered and finally outlasted.”

For a good majority of the runtime, the movie has battle scenes. Ebert said, “They are not as lucid and easy to follow as the events in "Black Hawk Down," but then the terrain is different, the canvas is larger, and there are no eyes in the sky to track troop movements.” Director Randall Wallace (who wrote “Braveheart” and “Pearl Harbor”) makes the story clear at each scene, as Moore and his North Vietnamese equivalent try to outsmart each other with assumption and character.

Wallace goes between the American soldiers, their wives back home on an Army base, and a tunnel trench where Ahn, played by Don Duang, the Viet Cong commander, plans it all out on a map. Both men are smart and sensitive. The enemy knows the area and can plan a surprise attack, but is surprise themselves at the way the Americans manage and fight at the moment.

Ebert noted, “"Black Hawk Down" was criticized because the characters seemed hard to tell apart.” “We Were Soldiers” doesn’t have that problem. In the Hollywood tradition it recognizes a few main characters, casts them with actors, and follows their stories. Along with the Gibson and Elliott characters, there are Maj. Crandall (Greg Kinnear), a helicopter pilot who flies into the war, the spirited Lt. Geoghegan (Chris Klein) and Joe Galloway (Barry Pepper), a photojournalist and soldier’s son, who gets a ride into the war, and sees he is fighting at the side of others to save his life.

The main relationship is between Moore and Plumley, and Gibson and Elliot show this with silent weight. They’re shown as professional soldiers with experience from Korea. As they’re preparing to go into the war, Moore tells Plumley, “Better get yourself that M-16.” The veteran responds: “By the time I need one, there’ll be plenty of them lying on the ground.” Fortuitously, there are.

Events on the Army base center around the lives of the soldiers’ wives, including Julie Moore, played by Madeleine Stowe, who looks after their five children and is the real leader of the other spouses. We also see Barbara Geoghegan, played by Keri Russell, who, because she is singled out, gives the audience a huge hint that the prediction for her husband is not good.

Telegrams telling the deaths of the war are given by a Yello Cab driver. Ebert asks, “Was the Army so insensitive that even on a base they couldn't find an officer to deliver the news?” That creates a blatant scene later, when a Yellow Cab goes in front of a house and obviously the wife inside thinks her husband is dead, only to see he is in the cab. Ebert noted, “This scene is a reminder of "Pearl Harbor," in which the Ben Affleck character is reported shot down over the English Channel and makes a surprise return to Hawaii without calling ahead. Call me a romantic, but when your loved one thinks you're dead, give them a ring.”

Ebert continues, “"We Were Soldiers" and "Black Hawk Down" both seem to replace patriotism with professionalism.” This movie makes the flag more than the other (even the Viet Cong’s Ahn looks at the stars and stripes with mysterious attention), but the narrations informs, “In the end, they fought for each other.” Ebert noted, “This is an echo of the "Black Hawk Down" line, "It's about the men next to you. That's all it is." Some will object, as they did with the earlier film, that the battle scenes consist of Americans with killing waves of faceless, non-white enemies. There is an attempt to give a face and a mind to the Viet Cong in the character of Ahn, but significantly, he is not listed in the major credits and I had to call the studio to find out his name and the name of the actor who played him.” However, almost all war movies show with one side or the other, and it’s great that “We Were Soldiers” includes a loyalty not only to the Americans who fell at Ia Drang, but also to “the members of the People’s Army of North Vietnam who died in that place.” Ebert said, “I was reminded of an experience 15 years ago at the Hawaii Film Festival, when a delegation of North Vietnamese directors arrived with a group of their films about the war. An audience member noticed that the enemy was not only faceless, but was not even named: At no point did the movies refer to Americans.” “That is true,” said one of the directors. “We have been at war so long, first with the Chinese, then the French, then the Americans, that we just think in terms of the enemy.”

Just like with all the movies I reviewed this month, I definitely say that you should check this one out because it really shows the reality of the war. It’s all shot very much like a documentary and everyone does a great job in this movie. Don’t miss the chance to see it because it is an absolute must.

Alright everyone, that comes to the end of “Vietnam War Movie Month.” I hope everyone enjoyed this month. Check out for what I have in store next month to close out the year.

Heaven and Earth

1993 seemed to have been Oliver Stone’s year of the woman. After producing “The Joy Luck Club,” he wrote and directed “Heaven and Earth,” an extensive, intense soap opera based on the memoirs by Le Ly Hayslip, who grew up in the rice farms in a central Vietnamese village of Ky La during the 1950s only to witness the country torn off by war. Owen Gleiberman said in his review, “Since Stone has often been taken to task for his testosterone-pumped vision (is there one memorable female character in the entire Stone canon?), it’s hard to avoid seeing his 1993 productions as a twin act of atonement. With Heaven and Earth, he has made the weeper to end all weepers” – a film where the main character, played by at that time newcomer Hiep Thi Le, sees her family torn and her village burnt. She goes through the humiliations of rape, torture and prostitution. Finally, she meets someone she falls in love with who can save her, U.S. Marine Steve Butler, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who’s a gentle, heroic man that you can predict will turn evil sometime down the road.

The story starts off in Ky La, where Le Ly’s childhood is shown as a wonderful laborer respite. Gleiberman mentioned, “Re-created in Thailand, the village, with its wandering animals, tidy tumbledown huts, and psychedelic green grass, looks like a surreal historical amusement park: Vietnamworld. (There’s even a Jurassic Park gateway at the village’s entrance.)” However, the respite doesn’t last long as war break in a drastic way that is traumatizing.

Gleiberman said, “When it comes to showcasing Le Ly’s brutalization at the hands of South Vietnamese torturers (who use electroshock) and bullying Viet Cong, the movie is vintage Stone: raw, manipulative, powerful. But when Le Ly abandons this war-torn hellhole for Saigon, where she finds work as a housekeeper and falls in love with her rich employer (who makes her pregnant), it becomes clear that, despite Hiep Thi Le’s tremulous presence, the heroine is drawn in strictly two dimensions. She’s blurry and passive, a Victim.” Everything seems to be happening to her, which at the same time helps and weakens the film’s look at women.

By the time Tommy Lee Jones comes in as Marine Sgt. Steve Butler, we’re ready for more Stone’s look at soldiers, and we get them, as Butler marries Le Ly, moves to an American city (a 60s sketch of plastic food and plastic people – just watch Stone have fun when Le Ly goes grocery shopping), and ends up being a soldier suffering PTSD whose spirit has been destroyed by the murders he did during the war. Gleiberman noted, “Jones’ showy, wild-eyed performance certainly isn’t boring, but it can’t diffuse the cloud of cliche that hovers over this role.”

Gleiberman continued, “Few would quarrel with Stone’s essential vision of the Vietnam experience: that it was a cataclysmic tragedy causing wounds that still fester in the American — and Vietnamese — consciousness. By now, though, after Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Stone’s continued obsession with Vietnam bespeaks a demagogic single-mindedness as exhausting as it is illuminating.” In “Heaven and Earth,” he uses Le Ly’s story educationally: The movie is so drenched with respect, long-suffering woman that it never quite calms. If the film gives any message worth warning, it’s that Stone, like America as well, needs to leave the war in the past.

As you might have predicted, this movie seems to have been wearing thin on the Vietnam War. I think that it was best to leave it alone after “Born on the Fourth of July,” especially since it would be traumatizing for anyone who would have seen that movie again. The first two were so well done that I don’t think there was any need to make a third. That’s the sad fact about trilogies is that third movie is often the worst and is considered the “black sheep” of the three. I think it would be best if everyone not see this movie, but if you do, then that’s fine, seeing how this is a decent movie.

Look out next week when I wrap up this year’s “Vietnam War Movie Month.”

Born on the Fourth of July

As a teenager in Massapequa, LI, in the 1960s, Ron Kovic believed in every right thing, including God, county and the domino theory. Vincent Canby described Ron Kovic like this: “He was Jack Armstrong, the all-American boy, good-looking, shy around girls and a surreptitious reader of Playboy. He was the archetypal son in a large archetypal lower-middle-class Roman Catholic family.”

When he fought as a part of the high school wrestling team, he wanted to win, and when he lost a match, he cried. Winning was his way of measuring how much he believed in himself. He didn’t question the values creating his positivity.

When he graduated from high school, he signed up for the Marine Corps to fight in Vietnam. “Communists are moving in everywhere,” he told his kind of more doubtful classmates. Canby said, “Home and hearth were endangered.” Ron Kovic, who actually was born on July 4^th, was ready when his country needed him.

In 1968, in his second on-duty call in Vietnam, a bullet shot him in his spinal column. Canby said, “He returned home a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down, emotionally as well as physically shattered. That was the beginning of a long, painful spiritual rehabilitation that coincided with his political radicalization.”

When the war had ended, Ron Kovic became one of the most impatient and cruel spokesmen for Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Childhood was now extinguished.

Taking Born on the Fourth of July, Ron Kovic’s famous spare memoir about his life story, published in 1976, Oliver Stone has made what is, in result, a 1989 harsh, furious afterthought to his Oscar-winning “Platoon.”

It is a film of huge animal power with, in the main role, a performance by Tom Cruise that gives everything that is best about the movie. He is both particular and characteristic. Canby said, “He is innocent and clean-cut at the start; at the end, angry and exhausted, sporting a proud mustache and a headband around his forehead and hippie-length hair.”

Though people say he’s handsome, Cruise looks completely right, which is not to underrate the performance itself. The two things cannot be easily separated. Watching Ron Kovic change, as he comes to grips with a reality that he was completely unprepared for, is both disturbing and inspiring.

Written by Oliver Stone and Ron Kovic, the screenplay is patriotic, sometimes too panoramic for its own good. It tells Ron’s childhood, his teenage years, his enlistment, the on-duty in Vietnam and his long recovery in a Bronx veterans’ hospital, a place that, as said by Canby, “makes Bedlam look like summer camp.”

Canby said, “No other Vietnam movie has so mercilessly evoked the casual, careless horrors of the paraplegic's therapy, or what it means to depend on catheters for urination, or the knowledge that sexual identity is henceforth virtually theoretical.”

Canby continued, “One of the film's problems is that it becomes increasingly generalized as it attempts to dramatize Mr. Kovic's transformation from a wide-eyed Yankee Doodle boy to an antiwar activist.”

The film is amazing when it is really specific. There is the nighttime mission when Ron’s outfit kills a group of Vietnamese peasants in the thought that a Vietcong patrol has been trapped.

In the confusion of a gun fight, Ron shoots one of his own corporals, played by Michael Compotaro, through the neck. When he tries to admit what he did, he is given pardon by an officer, played by Tom Berenger, who tells him that he must be mistaken and that, really, these things happen.

Equally painful are the post-hospital scenes when Ron returns to his well-meaning but confused family in Massapequa (Raymond J. Barry, Caroline Kava, Josh Evans, Jamie Talisman, Anne Bobby and Samantha Larkin), where he is awarded as the grand marshal of the annual Fourth of July parade. People are always trying to help, but he always replies with, “I’m O.K. I’m all right,” or “O.K. O.K.” However, there is no understanding.

There is a really sad scene with the family when Ron comes home one night from the local bar, drunk as that’s what he has picked up. In a PTSD moment, he pulls out the catheter. His mother calls him a drunk. His father tries to put him inside his room. Ron cries about his dead manhood. His mother screams to not use that specific word in her house (you know what word I’m talking about, don’t act like you don’t).

The film becomes less persuasive when Ron gets his new political awareness, maybe because, seeing everything that he has gone through before, the change is so necessary to the drama. Canby said, “Mr. Stone's penchant for busy, jittery camera movements and cutting also do not help.” Despite they reflect at Ron’s earlier version, they start to doubt the character of the man they are going to show.

Every cast member in here is excellent. It includes Raymond J. Barry and Caroline Kava as Ron’s parents, the great Kyra Sedgwick (Kevin Bacon's wife) as his high school girlfriend, Frank Whaley, who is really good as a fellow veteran, one of the few people that Ron can talk to when he comes home, and Cordelia Gonzalez as the Mexican prostitute who tries to persuade Ron that he’s still a man.

The two stars of “Platoon” make cameo appearances: Tom Berenger, as the marine who recruits Ron with his inspiring speech at Ron’s high school, and Willem Dafoe, as a fellow handicap veteran Ron meets during a brief visit in Mexico. An aging Abbie Hoffman, an icon of the Vietnam War, makes a sad, curious cameo, more or less playing himself during an antiwar demonstration set in the 1960s. (Hoffman killed himself in April at the age of 52.) “Born on the Fourth of July” is a far more difficult movie to watch than “Platoon.” Canby said, “It's the most ambitious nondocumentary film yet made about the entire Vietnam experience. More effectively than Hal Ashby's ''Coming Home'' and even Michael Cimino's ''Deer Hunter,'' it connects the war of arms abroad with the war of conscience at home.”

As much as anything else, Ron Kovic’s story is about the killing of one man’s American boundary.

As I have stated before, this is a really sad and difficult movie to watch, emotionally speaking. If you get the chance to see it, you only need to see it once, and the effect stays with you forever. If you can actually watch this more than once, then you have more willpower than I do. I do say watch this, as it is a film that should not be missed, just so that you know something about Ron Kovic’s life. You don’t want to miss the chance to watch this movie.

With that said, check in next week where we look at the finale of Oliver Stone’s Vietnam Trilogy in “Vietnam War Movie Month.”

Platoon

John Gilpatrick started his review by saying, “I never thought I’d see a war film as brutal and uncompromising as The Deer Hunter, but Oliver Stone’s quasi-autobiographical film Platoon comes awfully close.” The film’s approach of putting you in their perspective isn’t completely unique, but it doesn’t get in better use. “Platoon,” released in 1986, gives you an idea of what war does to someone and what being in Vietnam might have been like. Neither is nice, making this a difficult film to watch. However, it’s obviously a powerful experience.

Our hero that tells us this is Chris Taylor, played by Charlie Sheen, a young American who quit college to enlist in the army because he was tired of the burden of fighting being on the poor and uneducated. The film starts just as he is put in Vietnam. He’s definitely a diamond in the rough, but he adds himself with his fellow men, especially Elias, played by Willem Dafoe, a free-spirited leader of the platoon. Elias finds himself up against Barnes, played by Tom Berenger, Elias’ no-nonsense equivalent. After a part where Barnes superfluously kills a villager and almost murders a child, the tension between the two men really heats us, and the platoon is divided in two.

This is a film filled with unforgettable characters and moments. Everyone knows the slow-motion shooting kills of one of the characters, but maybe the most memorable scene is the one where Barnes shows how he really is at the village. It’s here that you see how deadly conflict can be. If Barnes has humanity in him is questionable, but if he was, it’s clear the war has sucked all of that out of him.

The fight scenes in “Platoon” are also really awesome. Gilpatrick said, “Everything feels incredibly chaotic—not in a shaky-cam sort of way, but rather the characters don’t know what’s going on. The final confrontation with the Viet Cong in particular demonstrates not only how much the characters have changed, but also how little they know about what’s going on around them.” When a plan doesn’t go the way you want, what is the alternative? Just run around and shoot people, sounds like the right solution.

The film also has one of the best ensemble casts ever. Charlie Sheen leads the way with a great performance, one of the best of his career. Gilpatrick noted, “Chris is full of philosophy and optimism when his tour begins. By the end, he’s a shell of a human being.” He no longer cares of himself, he just wants to kill.

The two best performances of the great ensemble were nominated for Oscars. Tom Berenger is a portrayal of evil as Barnes. Willem Dafoe plays a little more complicated character. Elias earns our sympathy, just by going against Barnes. He earns our respect for stopping a violent murder. However, he can still murder, and when the worst comes his way, he does exactly that.

The rest of the cast is consisted of Johnny Depp (blink and you’ll miss him), Forest Whitaker, Keith David, John C. McGinley and Kevin Dillon. Gilpatrick noted, “David and Dillon have the meatiest roles. The former plays a happy-go-lucky soldier who is lucky enough to get out. The latter is a bloodthirsty disciple of Barnes.”

Gilpatrick admitted, “Platoon is quite simply one of the most powerful motion pictures I’ve ever seen.” War films are not made very much, but they don’t make them like this a lot. There’s nothing completely unique about it. It’s just an extremely well-told story. Since “Platoon,” Oliver Stone has been hit or mess. However, he’ll always be able to retire on this masterpiece, which is as good a film as any.

You should definitely see this movie, it is a must. If you loved all the other Vietnam War movies, this one you will love as well. Charlie Sheen’s character was portrayed through Oliver Stone’s experience of being in the Vietnam War. Sheen was Stone throughout that movie. Sheen also does note that Stone was really rough with the cast. This is one that is not to be missed and you should not skip over. See it for yourself, and be in for one heck of an experience that you have never been on before.

People may or may not know this, but this movie is the first in Oliver Stone’s “Vietnam Trilogy.” To know how the others were, stay tuned next week when I look at the second installment in “Vietnam War Movie Month.”

Apocalypse Now

Welcome back everyone to “Vietnam War Movie Month,” where I will be looking at the rest of the Vietnam War movies that I missed out on last year. Let’s get things really started off with the 1979 classic, and one of my favorite films ever, “Apocalypse Now.”

Captain Benjamin Willard says in this movie, “Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.” This idea can also be put into the thought of reviewing “Apocalypse Now” 39 years after the original release. It’s actually a pointless effort since the movie has already been declared by just about every critic as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, war film of all time. The critical success of the film is way more amazing seeing how it was once thought it couldn’t be made. Jason Zingale said in his review, “Not even the illustrious Orson Welles could tackle such a monstrous undertaking, and so the task of adapting Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” fell upon director Francis Ford Coppola.” Just like a lot of the best war films that came after, “Apocalypse Now” is not really about the real Vietnam War and more about the social and political results that came from it.

Once a really praised military officer with a great career, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, played by the late Marlon Brando, has finally broken and is now hiding in Cambodia as the leader of a local tribe. As a result, the military calls Special Forces agent Captain Benjamin Willard, played by Martin Sheen, to take on a top secret mission to kill the rebel officer. Making his way through Vietnam on a Navy PT boat, Willard brings along the boat’s operator (Albert Hall) and his team of miserable soldiers – including professional surfer, Lance (Sam Bottoms), New Orleans cook, Chef (Frederic Forrest), and gun-loving teen, Mr. Clean (Laurence Fishburne) – as they try to find a war hero.

The film takes a hilarious twist when the men join the cavalry of Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, a savage air cavalry commander who enjoys surfing and (you guessed it) “Loves the smell of napalm in the morning.” Being Willard’s escort over some of the worse areas of the mission, Kilgore gives everyone a front-row fiery show when he leads an air fight over a small Vietnamese village. Zingale noted, “Scored to the orchestral melody, “Flight of the Valkyrie,” the scene not only stands as one of the greatest cinematic achievements of combining images with music, but it also single-handedly promoted the advent of 5.1 stereo sound in American cinema.”

“Apocalypse Now” starts to break after Kilgore leaves, with a surprising interest in improving the atmosphere into one that highly looks like Lance’s psychedelic drug trip. The flaws aren’t really noticeable until Brando comes on, however. His performance as the Green Beret suffering PTSD is really bad, and it’s easy to see the reasons behind the stories about Brando not wanting to be a part of this. Putting on 40 pounds and failing to read the script before filming, the late actor doesn’t look nearly as lost as he maybe was. Zingale said, “The character of Kurtz comes off more like a sleepy-eyed beatnik than a military man gone mad, and though Dennis Hopper’s memorable performance as a drugged-out photojournalist helps to save the final act from total collapse, it’s hardly enough to make you forget that Brando was an overpaid prima donna who took advantage of his power within the industry however he pleased.”

Still, “Apocalypse Now” gives one of the best character looks in the history of the idea. Not that Willard is badly complex, but it’s interesting to see as he goes from broken man to broken soldier, and from sympathetic companion to a beginning stage of animal that really resembles Kurtz’s own downfall. However, the two men can’t really be compared by the end of the film as they are in the beginning and despite Willard displays some of the same characteristics as the crazy soldier; he doesn’t choose the same path. Or does he? We’re not really sure, since the film never really answers this question, but maybe the answer can be found at the start of the film. Maybe this is all just the start of “The End,” or maybe it’s already done.

The late R. Lee Ermey and Harrison Ford are also in this movie, along with a cameo appearance from director Francis Ford Coppola.

I can’t do this film justice by reviewing it. You just have to see it to believe what had happened. From a film that had suffered from typhoons, nervous breakdowns, Harvey Keitel’s termination, Martin Sheen’s heart attack, extras from the Philippine military and half of the supplied helicopters leaving the middle of scenes to go fight rebels and how Brando was in this film, it was delayed so much. It was made though, but after all these trial and tribulations that came from it, you have to see this and give it so much credit for at least being made. I haven’t seen the documentary film, but I’m thinking I should. Like I said, don’t read my review, just watch the film if you haven’t, this is a must.

Now that we got this classic looked at, look out next week for the continuation of “Vietnam War Movie Month.”

Air America

Roger Spottiswoode’s 1990 war film, “Air America,” is half glorious, half bad, but sadly not in equal amounts.

The movie is set in Laos in 1969 in a war that hasn’t really happened, at an airship that never existed. The protagonists are renegade pilots working for the CIA who love to fly the cargo they are asked to fly (rice, pigs, guns, cocaine) take their money and not ask a lot of questions.

Their employer (allegedly) is Air America, and they live by its motto, “Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.” The work they do is offensively dangerous, done under odd conditions, which looks like it’s what they like best. “The berserker the better.” Trouble junkies is how Gene, played by Mel Gibson, the group’s supposed leader, describes them. “We’ve been mainlining danger for so long, nothing else gets us off.”

Hal Hinson said in his review, “Working from a script by Richard Rush and John Eskow, Spottiswoode builds his community of head-case misfits on a Howard Hawksian model -- they're cooled-out, '60s updates of the daredevil pilots who flew headlong in raging storms in "Only Angels Have Wings."” Most of these guys are no good. For example, Billy, played by Robert Downy Jr., is a former traffic helicopter pilot for a Los Angeles radio station who did a low-flying stunt that took away his license. Hinson said, “Nobody told him that in joining up with Air America he was signing up for a private war, and being the new kid and still politically idealistic, the moral tightrope walking makes him uncomfortable.”

Gene, who’s been doing his own private scam for years, buying up guns for huge amounts, is more realistic. His politics aren’t based simply on suitability, but he accepts as part of the bargain that their company sells cocaine for General Lu Sung, played by Burt Kwouk, who wants to save up enough money to buy a Holiday Inn back in the states, in exchange for help from Laotian soldiers. “We’re not drug smugglers, “Gene says. “We’re pack mules.”

Hinson said, “Spottiswoode navigates these treacherous moral shoals without moralizing or stacking the deck. As he showed in "Under Fire," he understands the gray areas of international politics in the modern age, and where his movie excels is in its grasp of the absurdity that governs the life of the pilots and binds them together.”

However, a lot of times the movie dissolves into formulaic action nonsense. There are a lot of close shaves, too much crashing and burning. Hinson noted, “The scenes involving the visit of a Bible-thumping U.S. senator (Lane Smith) and the attempts by the American brass to keep him in the dark are tedious and unfunny, and it doesn't help that in playing the senator Lane seems to be mimicking his own astounding performance as Richard Nixon on television in "The Final Days."”

What lets anyone watch this movie is the funny banter between the two stars. Hinson noted, “As an unpredictable gambling wild man, Gibson seems to be mostly coasting, running variations on the characters he played in the "Lethal Weapon" films and "Bird on a Wire." Still, he's playing a kind of masculine ideal here (as Cary Grant did in the Hawks film) and there's grace and assurance in his laid-back style.” Gibson is perfectly matching with Downey, who’s crazier and more youthfully kinetic. This is a powerful young actor, which doesn’t matter of the material. It’s fun watching him think things through on screen. These two have spirit, and Spottiswoode gives them areas to interact. They give the movie its power.

This is a very entertaining movie about the Vietnam War. If you have not seen it, then definitely check it out, but if you don’t like it, I understand. People probably didn’t like how it must have been over exaggerated in areas, like the humor and the senator. People probably wanted more of a focus on the war, but I think it was all about the funny interactions between the characters. Watch it and give it a chance.

Now we have come to the conclusion of “Vietnam War Movie Month.” I hope everyone enjoyed this month, and hopefully I have made good recommendations. Stay tuned next month to see what I end this year off with. I’m really looking forward to it because it’s going to be a series of films that I really love. Stay tuned because I know I’m excited.

Forrest Gump

“Forrest Gump,” released in 1994, is an emotional movie of eccentric fun and surprising beauty. There was talk of another Oscar for Tom Hanks, who is unforgettable as the nice man, poorly treated simpleton of the title. Peter Travers is right when he said in his review, “The Academy is a sucker for honoring afflicted heroes. In Hollywood, it's always raining rain men. Credit Hanks for not overplaying his hand.” He brings an amazing weight to the role of a low-level IQ man from the South who finds strength in God, country, his childhood love, Jenny (Robin Wright), and his amazing mother (Sally Field). When Forrest is shown that his is a few IQ points below the minimum school requirements, his mother knows how she can get around that. Her son has a gift. As Forrest goes through everything that happens from the 50s to the 80s, he becomes a college football star, a Vietnam veteran, a shrimp magnate and even a father.

Travers noted, “Taking a cue from Zelig, director Robert Zemeckis places Forrest in a vivid historical context — he talks with JFK, LBJ and Nixon, among other luminaries. The effects dazzle, though never at the expense of the story. Winston Groom, who wrote the 1986 novel, saw Forrest as a modern Candide, an optimist in the face of strong opposing evidence. But Groom is no Voltaire, and neither is screenwriter Eric Roth (Mr. Jones, Memories of Me), who blunts his satire with choking sentiment. It's Hanks who brings humor and unforced humanity to the literary conceit of Forrest, though the slim actor scarcely resembles the 6-foot-6-inch, 240-pound bruiser of the book.”

In a college dorm with Jenny, who lets him touch her chest, Forrest gets instantly attracted to it, losing her interest and his self-respect. In the Army, Forrest saves hi captain, played by Gary Sinise, whose lets are later amputated, and the captain hates him. Forrest is everything we love in the American character – honest, brave, loyal – and the film’s intense irony is that nobody can be with him for very long.

Travers said, “Zemeckis doesn't fall into the trap of using Forrest as an ad for arrested development. He knows the limits of a holy fool who can't understand the hypocrisy of postwar America that this picaresque epic so powerfully reveals.” The peace-love affectations of the 60s are pierced as nicely as the greed decades that come after. However, there is something of Forrest that Zemeckis would like to see his audience get: his capacity for hope. It’s a determined goal in this age of extensive pessimism.

You shouldn’t even be reading this review if you have not even seen the movie. Go out and see it, even though I do think it was wrong that Forrest is such a nice man, but Jenny treats him like dirt, but then again, what person that doesn’t have a low IQ that is a good-natured person doesn’t? I don’t mistreat those people because I was taught never to judge anyone. Also, this movie has some of the best quotes ever, like “My name is Forrest Gump, people call me Forrest Gump,” “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get” and “I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is Jenny.” Check this movie out because it is an entertaining, feel good, slice of life movie. There are some emotional moments, but in the end, you’ll absolutely love it, I promise you.

Alright everyone, check in tomorrow night when I review one of the latest movies that was just recently released. It’s another movie that I have been wanting to see, not excited for as much, but one that I have been looking forward to forever. You might know what I’m talking about, but just stay tuned tomorrow night to find out.

Good Morning, Vietnam

Scott Weinberg started his review out by saying, “Last night was my first revisit with Barry Levinson's Good Morning, Vietnam since the late 80s, and while I distinctly remember enjoying the film because of Robin Williams' wild antics and surprisingly warm performance, it was last night's screening that made me realize the movie's got a whole lot more than just its leading man.”

The setting of the comedy classic “Good Morning, Vietnam” released in 1987, is Vietnam in the mid 1960s, when the situation was still known as “military police action,” and wasn’t really known as a full-blown and dangerous “war.” Coming straight off from his service in Greece is radio DJ Adrian Cronauer, played by the late Robin Williams, whose broadcasts is loved by the right officer and predicated his transfer to Saigon. Cronauer quickly rises to the top by way of his rough rock and comedy broadcasts, his effortlessly likable personality, and his soon-to-be famous catchphrase: “Goooooooood Morning Vietnaaaaam!”

I don’t think it comes as a surprise that there are those who don’t like Cronauer’s method of being a DJ, most notably a 2^nd Lt. Steven Hauk (Bruno Kirby) and a Sergeant Major Dickerson (JT Walsh). On the other end are Adrian’s friends and supporters: Brigadier General Taylor (Noble Willingham), PFC Ed Garlick (Forest Whitaker) and Sgt. Marty Dreiwitz (Robert Wuhl). (Throw in some great supporting performances from Richard Edson as a clueless private and Richard Portnow as Dan “The Man” Levitan, and you’re looking at a memorable ensemble cast.)

Weinberg noted, “Aside from the main story of Cronauer's inspired brand of insanity, his conflicts with the brass, and the fanbase he slowly starts to build, Good Morning, Vietnam branches off into quite a few unpredictable paths.” One bittersweet subplot is Adrian gently flirting with a lovely Vietnamese girl (Chintara Shukapatana), however they both know it’s a pointless relationship. Another is Cronauer’s friendship with a Vietnamese teen (Tung Thanh Tran)… who may or may not be a Viet Cong terrorist.

Weinberg said, “Robin Williams was awarded his very first Oscar nomination for his performance as Adrian Cronauer, and I wouldn't argue that accolade one bit.” The man really was a force to reckon with, making a character that is instantly likable, really funny, and completely the type of guy you’d want to be friends with. (Williams was also nominated for “Dead Poets Society” and “The Fisher King” before winning the Oscar for “Good Will Hunting.”)

Weinberg noted, “Most movies would have been content to have Robin Williams' non-stop shtick, mixed liberally with the whole "misfit vs. military" side-story, but Barry Levinson clearly wanted to bring some sincerity to the flick, which helped to bring a "grass-roots" perspective to the Vietnam war (or at least a part of it) that the average moviegoer would be able to understand and appreciate.” (However, Williams did something right. In the domestic box office, “Good Morning, Vietnam” was one of 1987’s highest-grossing movies, approaching $124.)

Weinberg mentioned, “Based (very) loosely on the experiences of a real man, Good Morning, Vietnam is hardly the finest film ever made about Vietnam, nor is it an entirely flawless one (some of the emotional fare leans on the cornball button just a bit, and an Act III subplot that sees Dickerson do something truly evil is just dumb), but there's a real depth and sincerity to the film that makes it really tough to dismiss as "just another Robin Williams rant-fest."” Also, Vietnam aside, the movie comes with a really nice message, and it’s that humor is important, and that laughter can do a whole lot of good. Hard to be tough on a movie with those types of valuable life lessons.

As far as wartime comedies are, “Good Morning, Vietnam” may not be “Dr. Strangelove” or “M.A.S.H.,” but it’s got a lot of respect for the area it talks about, a solid amount of really strong laughs, and a few lost themes of real heart and insight. If you haven’t seen this one in a while, definitely don’t miss the chance to re-watch this movie. Weinberg ended his review by saying, “I think it's a better film today than it was 18 years ago.”

This is definitely one of the funniest movies ever made, and is a classic. How can you not like a movie where Robin Williams was given free range to do whatever he wanted and go off with his improve genius mind? This is one of those movies where it had to be that way, and I highly recommend everyone to see this as it is one of my favorite Robin Williams films.

Look out next week where we look at another classic in “Vietnam War Movies Month.”

Full Metal Jacket

For the month of November, I will be talking about movies based on the Vietnam War. Seeing how November has Veterans Day, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Let’s start off the month with the 1987 classic and one of my favorite films, “Full Metal Jacket.”

Stanley Kubrick, after seven years since filming “The Shining,” returned to filmmaking with this amazingly well-done, profane, dark humored and miserable antiwar Vietnam War film. Dennis Schwartz said in his review, “Though it makes for a fascinating watch, it's steely-eye cold and less about the Vietnam War than about how the Marine Corps turns its recruits into killers. It's based on the novel ''The Short Timers'' by Gustav Hasford, and is written by Kubrick, Hasford and Michael Herr.” The film is split into two parts. The first part is about the newly recruited Marines undergoing a rigorous boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina, while the second part is about the actual Vietnam War.

In the first part, the aggressive chosen recruits are called maggots by their cruel very loud drill instructor, Gunner Sgt. Hartman, played by R. Lee Ermey (former real-life Marine DI), who prepares them to be murderers, have no fear and give everything to the corps. In his opening speech he clearly states that he thinks everyone is equally worthless. Hartman goes around to each recruit and gives them nicknames, including Private Snowball (Peter Edmund), a Texas recruit is renamed Private Cowboy (Arliss Howard) after being told who actually comes from the state, a comedian who does a John Wayne impression gets punched in his stomach and is renamed Private Joker (Matthew Modine), and the smiling stupid platoon misfit who makes Hartman really annoyed is renamed Private Gomer Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio). Hartman intimidates Gomer Pyle throughout training for being useless, unintelligent and fat, and gets the other soldiers in the platoon to also hate him by punishing them when Pyle makes a mistake. Under so much antagonizing and humiliation Pyle finally breaks, and what he does is just frightening.

Schwartz said, “In part two, Joker, the film's nominal hero and narrator and the star recruit of basic training, is in Vietnam as a reporter for Stars and Stripes and after confronting his slick CO with sarcastic remarks about the war's progress is shipped out to the combat zone at the height of the Tet Offensive in 1968. Joker, the gutsy humorous humanist, wears a peace symbol on his battle fatigues and, on his helmet, the slogan ''Born to Kill.'' But in the end, the soldier with confusing dual purposes lives up to his Marine indoctrination to kill for the corps, as the combat mission ends in the film in the ruins of the city of Hue (a Kubrick symbol for the useless destructive nature of war, that brings everyone down).”

Nobody’s a hero like John Wayne, as Kubrick’s purpose to show the violence in training soldiers, the madness of any war and how militarism causes the regular dehumanization needed to turn men into heartless killers, are all related to the war-hungry American society and how there can no winners following such a limited faith.

The completely all-male cast (besides a few Vietnamese prostitutes) gets into their roles and gives amazing performances. The military dialogue is filled with vulgarity, which gives the film a heartless power separating it from many others. Schwartz ended his review by saying, “It was filmed in England, where Kubrick used a military barracks outside London to substitute for Parris Island and used a deserted gasworks in London's East End, a plant area that had been bombed-out during WWII, to great effect as the Hue combat area.”

I know that people seem to not like this movie after the training scenes, but I think it was actually nice to see how war can change a man completely. I would say, especially in this day in age, that the whole movie needs to be seen and not just the first part. The second part needs to get a better understanding and needs to be liked, especially since I think it has been wrongfully hated and does show the realism of war. Kubrick really outdid himself with this one, and it’s not the usual traits he has used, which is some scary horror films. He does a war film, and he does an amazing job here. Definitely see this, as it is one of the best war films ever made.

Now, I will need some much deserved rest. I will be taking a whole week off and will not be making another review until next Friday when I continue “Vietnam War Month.”