We Were Soldiers Reviews

As many movie watchers will tell you, Hollywood's depiction of the Vietnam War has tended to be very uneven, often surreal, and (to the detriment of anyone with any serious interest in the topic) all too often told from a liberal and anti-war perspective that's heavy on "message" but light on the experience of the men and women who, for good or ill, went to Indochina in the service of their country.  The only war film of the era that tried to counter the trend was the 1968 John Wayne vehicle The Green Berets,  which even Tom Clancy, the best-known chronicler and supporter of America's armed forces...

We Were Soldiers (2002)

An excellent view of the early Vietnam experience was adapted from the novel by General Harold G. Moore, who had commanded the 1/7 Cavalry at the Battle of Ia Drang in November 1965. The First Battalion of the 7th Cavalry (1/7 Cav) had fought the first major engagement between American forces and North Vietnamese regulars, as directed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Randall Wallace directed We Were Soldiers and Mel Gibson starred as Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Hal Moore, who led the battalion through its training phase in Fort Benning GA and also when they were posted as...

Looking for something to watch in HD last night, I stumbled across the movie We Were Soldiers on the TNT Network. The film, starring Mel Gibson, Greg Kinnear, Madeline Stowe and a raft of unknowns, made barely a blip on my radar when it was released in 2002 but it had an impact last night. This is a good war film that attempts to document a single battle in Vietnam in November 1965. It is based on a book called We Were Soldiers Once... and Young, written by a retired general named Hal Moore and a UPI reporter named Joe Galloway. (Galloway was with Moore's troops for the entire battle.)

The film...