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.