We Were Soldiers [Blu-ray]

Going out Highway 19, west of Pleiku, there was the French tea plantation, where a Frenchman and his two daughters lived, in relative security throughout the American war in Vietnam (LBJ had given orders that no American units were to fire into the tea plantation, even if fired upon). A bit beyond, was LZ Oasis. And from there one could look off to the southwest, some 20-30 km, and see the Chu Pong massif. Beneath, and around was the river valley known as the Ia Drang. By 1969, it seemed that no American soldiers really knew what happened there, other than the all-encompassing “some bad s…”. The massif’s shadow reached the Oasis, darkly, but in a metaphorical sense.Thanks to Joe Galloway, who was the only reporter at the Battle of the Ia Drang, in 1965, and who, in conjunction with the commanding officer, Lt. Col. Hal Moore, wrote the book “We were soldiers once, and young,” which was published almost three decades after the battle, we now have a fairly accurate and objective picture of the battle. I’ve read (and reviewed in 2009) the book and have now seen the movie twice. The book was much better, for a key reason: the quote from Aeschylus, “In war, truth is the first casualty,” which was an epigraph for the chapter on the after-battle “spin” that was placed on the battle, some of which was spun in the movie.It was the very first query in the movie: “Where does it begin?” For me, in particular, it was a 6-star answer, another shadow, that stopped too soon: June 25, 1954. The ambush and annihilation of the 2000 men and 10 tanks of French Groupe Mobile 100, on Highway 19, near An Khe. What followed is a 2-minute Hollywood re-enactment of the ambush… and the viewer is treated to some French epithets: pute chaleur, pute herbe, even pute pays… all of which was quite true, for armies of occupation. What is unmentioned is that this battle occurred six weeks AFTER the fall of Dien Bien Phu, when most of the world thought the war was over. Another version of the last men to die for a mistake. Further, unmentioned, is that American tanks fought in precisely the same area, only to be superseded by Soviet T-54’s, with Vietnamese crews, splitting southern Vietnam in half, in April 1975. That too could have been told.In many ways, the Ia Drang was unique. It happened so very early in the war. Though precise numbers remain a bit fuzzy, probably more American soldiers died in the Ia Drang than at more famous battles, for example, Hue and Khe Sanh. “Famous” for a reason: more reporters were at the latter ones! Would we know anything about the Ia Drang if Joe Galloway had not been there? There was no other battle in which so many Americans and Vietnamese fought out in the open. It was extremely rare for American units in Vietnam to train, in the States, before deployment, as a unit. Far more typically, replacements were fed into units piecemeal, knowing no one already there (which, I felt, was a better way, since “veterans” of 10 months can bring the newbies up to speed, quickly). It appears that Lt. Col. Moore was genuinely depicted as a “lead from the front” officer: “my boots will be the first on the ground, and the last off,” “we will all come home,” and “take care of the men.” I knew two such officers. Regrettably, I knew many others, including one who could not read a map. The 1st Cav patches in the movie were yellow, true enough in 1965, before going to all black camouflage, and officers not wearing their rank (mindful of snipers!).Even Hollywood could not have made up another “shadow.” The 1/7th Cav, the unit that Moore led, was the SAME one that Custer led (and Moore fully appreciated the irony). Also, purportedly, the 1/7th lost its battle standard in Korea. And now, in 1965, they were one of the very few units ever to have to call “broken arrow,” meaning that it was being overrun, and EVERY plane in the area of operation was to provide support.There was a lot in the movie I liked. A willingness to depict what one had to do when an American soldier got hit with white phosphorous – cut it out with a knife; a very accurate depiction of an American soldier hit with napalm; the callousness of delivering notifications of the death of one’s husband via a cab driver; the black wife of an officer unable to use a laundromat in the town outside Fort Benning, GA, in 1965, because it was “Whites Only”; the jackals of the press arriving just after the battle, with their inane questions; the efforts of the MACV high command to get Moore off the battlefield, ‘cause losing draftees is one thing, but losing a Lt. Col. is a “massacre”; and yes, Moore leading from the front and refusing to leave the battlefield.And there was a lot about the movie I did not like. At Fort Benning, Moore is apparently reading what the French had done in Indochine, in French, based on the book he carried, and he had been to Harvard, pute Harvard if you will excuse my French, and yet does not ask the most fundamental questions about why America is in the same “shadow”; the “tell my wife I love her” sign-off of the dying soldier; the “John Wayne” charge, which “Moore” led, that never happened; the omission of the worse slaughter at LZ Albany (only the fighting at LZ X-Ray was depicted), and, yes, where was Aeschylus, when we really needed him, as he was depicted in the book?Moore deserves much credit for being one of the first back to Vietnam, to lead in efforts of reconciliation with the former adversary. As for the movie, 3-stars.

I was three yrs old when the Vietnam War ended for America (1973). But like everyone in my generation I grew up in its shadow. A shadow very unlike WW2, which cast an aura of invincibility, unity, triumph and glory. Instead, my generation came up in the Vietnam War's vicious, hateful, divisive politics that still dominate the national discourse today.So to me, and the millions of others in their 30's and 40's, Vietnam is both past and present. To understand today's political climate and ideological animus which drives it, Vietnam must be understood. But before that, the experience of the men who fought and died 12,000 miles away in places most had never heard of, must be grasped. And, as other reviewers here have noted, most "Vietnam" movies tend to concentrate on politics, propaganda or the just plain weird (to this day I'm still not sure what, despite its cinematic phantasmagoria, exactly Francis Ford Coppola was trying to say with "Apocalypse Now")."We Were Soldiers" eschews all three. The prism through which Randall Wallace presents his film is the experience of Lt. Gen. Hal Moore (Ret.), Joe Galloway's and the officers and men of the 7th Air Cavalry. Geopolitics and the macroview are irrelevant here. As Hal Moore puts it, this is the story of survival, and brotherhood, under the most horrendous things man can do to man.As Barry Pepper's Joe Galloway, reporter UPI and co-author of the book upon which the movie is based, tells us, in a voice over at the end of the movie, "[The veterans of Vietnam] went to war because their government ordered them to... But[in the end] they fought for each other." And that, more than anything else, is what this movie captures more poignantly and realistically than any other "Vietnam" ever has or is ever likely to.The camraderie of the battlefield is something only those who have survived it can truly understand. Randal Wallace, the masterful, intensely human Mel Gibson (the irrational, ridiculously petty hatred of him that is expressed by some reviewers mars what are otherwise some good reviews) and the superb cast bring the brutal reality, fear, the blood, death, tragedy, dirt, and the sheer horror as close to the reality as a movie is ever likely to. Just as "Saving Private Ryan" stripped World War II of the rose colored prism of Audie Murphy heroics (one is tempted to say "melodramatics") to reveal what was ultimately an ugly, horrible conflict, "We Were Soldiers" does something like the opposite. The Vietnam soldier is FINALLY presented as neither war criminal ("Babykillers!") or only as a pawn of myopic, idiot politicians, obsessed with the quotidian (though he certainly was that) "kill-ratios."Everytime I watch this movie I find myself feeling deeply moved, the emotions nearly as strong as when I saw the Wall in DC in high school. As I watched it with my father, who was too old for Vietnam, we both found ourselves in tears. With stark simplicity this film brings the reality home of what it the was ultimately was about: the men who fought and died in it. The men who were seared together in a bond of brotherhood that transcended the political, racial and religious divisions that were (and still are) rending our national fabric. To the soldiers, as Galloway's narration tells us, what they became together was more important than anything else.If "We Were Soldiers" leaves you with nothing else, it should be the penultimate image of the airport, where one 7th Cav vet pushes another, wheelchair bound, through the airport--with no marching bands, no crowds of of eager families, no TV news cameras to "hail the conquering heroes." The Vietnam veteran came home very much as he'd left it: quiet and unnoticed. Though occasionally denounced & insulted, he was far often simply forgotten; he was an unwanted & visible reminder of the tremendous upheaval our society had endured. The country wanted to forgot that and the easiest way was to forget him."We who have seen war will never stop seeing war," Galloway tell us, and no movie can be anything but a pale echo of that reality. But what a deeply moving pathos Wallace and Gibson bring to it!There is an intangible quality this movie captures what few war movies, and no Vietnam movie, have ever brought tbeen able to do. If Hal Moore himself, in one of the documentaries on the DVD, can say, "[This is] the first movie that gets it right," what more needs to be said?Watch the movie with awe and gratitude for it gives to the men who fought in the Ia Drang in 14-16 NOV, 1965, what Lincoln did for the men who had fought 102 years earlier at Gettysburg: a monument so that we can "never forget what they [gave]...the last full measure of devotion."Wallace and Gibson give us a tribute to those brave young men (four of whom won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the battle) that "neither adds nor detracts" but presents it as closely as any work of art ever can.I can never know what it was like to fight and die in that place. I can never know, equally, what it was like to wait, anxious and benumbed, as the wives and families of the men of the 7th Air Cav. To repeat, nothing can ever give these experiences of those men and women to those who didn't live through, but this movie finally allows me to understand, on some small level, what is was like to be "soldiers [then] and young."

Excelente compra, me llegó en tiempo y forma; el audio viene en latino lo cual me fascina.

Great

alles vom besten! super ware! blitzversand!

最高です

Ce n'est pas un film de guerre qui ne vous montre que la guerre elle-même mais ce film a un côté humain que peu de films de guerre possèdent.Bien sûr, certains feront le reproche que les Américains sont encore une fois les bons et que les soldats d'en face sont forcément tous méchants.Mais si vous analysez cet excellent film vous vous apercevrez que c'est loin d'être le cas.Autant les simples soldats que les officiers ont des états d'âmes, se demandent ce qu'ils font là et s'ils sont finalement mieux que ceux du camp d'en face.Ce film montre le 1er engagement sérieux d'une guerre qui allait plonger l'Amérique dans le désarroi et dont on parlerait encore plusieurs décennies plus tard.C'est extrêmement bien filmé, les combats sont d'un réalisme total et les acteurs n'en font pas trop.La tension est parfois telle que vous avez l'impression de vous trouver à côté des soldats qui attendent avec angoisse la prochaine attaque de l'ennemi.Question dvd, rien à reprocher. Les images et le son sont parfaits pour un dvd.Je recommande sans hésiter ce très bon film qui vous présentera la guerre du Vietnam sous un angle plus humain que des classiques comme Platoon ou Full Metal Jacket.