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The Green Berets

The Green Berets

List Price: $12.97
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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Utter Garbage
Review: This is the worst war film I have ever viewed. It is flawed in every respect. The acting is shoddy...the special effects are absolutely childlike. The helicopter crashing scene rates as the most amatuerish scene I have ever witnessed on screen. John Wayne is a favourite of mine...I just can't find any redeeming fetures at all. Give this a wide berth.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Larry Thorne
Review: As a Finn, I am proud to tell that the movie and the book tells about our and US national hero Larry A Thorne.
Go and get it, yes it is an old one but a good one, John Wayne never did a bad one, right?

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Oh!.....What a Shocker !!!!
Review: I first saw this movie on TV in Australia in 1975. Ironically, the war in question had just ended with victory for the movie's bad guys.But even if we { Australia was involved in this war too } had have won, it still wouldn't detract from just how awful and corny this movie is. The futures of the cute little Vietnamese orphan, the pretty girl who did the wild thing with the VC colonel "for her country", which 7 years later was kaputski, and the unfortunatley named ARVN Colonel Ky would have been very dismal indeed post 1975. I wonder if any of those 3 would have made it to the embassy rooftop before the NVA armour came storming in!. But seriously, it's laughable to say the least. They even had the Vietnamese talking like Sioux "we build forts,we kill many VC!" and I just couldn't get over the VC in the staff car in the middle of the jungle,on that beautifully made road. Looked like somebody's driveway in Hawaii {Where were the Vietnam scenes for this movie shot?] But I do like the song though,pity it came out 25 years too late.Would have been right at home in WW2. But all in all,this movie is dreadful, maybe I'm biased because of the time that I first saw it, and it was no longer relevant on account of the communist victory, but I don't think it really makes any difference.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Truth Hurts Some People
Review: I saw this movie at the drive in when I was 7 and never forgot it. After a tour with the 82nd Airborne I joined the reserves and served with a Special Forces unit and met men who lived what this movie portrays. I've read reviews that said that this movie ignored politics and remade WW2 and westerns as a VN movie. What movie did they see? The opening scene alone endured this movie to SF veterans. Actor Aldo Ray (WW2 Frogman vet) tells why the US was in VN and dumps a case of ammo on David Jensen's newsman. This movie attacks politics head on. As far as being a remade western, that was the truth of the war, those camps called "fort Appache" or what ever, actually existed. The movie has been called a propoganda film, yet the Special Forces did, as the movie protrays, treat the local population with medical care and the Viet Cong did, as the movie portrays, murder villagers who denied them aid. The movie has cliches but in this case there is truth. One of the problems with this movie is that what made Special Forces in VN so special was still classified and much of the Robin Moore Book that it inspired was outdated for the time the movie portrays. The VC general driving around the jungle in a staff car comes to mind. I call this a great bad movie because there are some unexcuseable flubs in this movie, which one would not expect from a John Wayne major motion picture. Scenes that draw hoots, even from those that love it, are the scene where SGT Provos gets shot in the chest point blank from a 50 Cal and lives long enough to drink a shot with the duke before dying. What trooper wouldn't want to go out like that. The special effects are inferior such as the helicopter crash and some of the pyhrotechs, and let's not forget the poor point man with the plastic metal M16, turns out he didn't need it anyway, as he demonstrated some fine hand to hand moves. Some people complain about the many pine trees in the film, I've never been to VN but I've been to Okinawa and I saw a lot of pine trees there so I'll let that go.

This film shows strong Americans helping the weak and that was the truth. Many laugh that in the final scene the sun sets over the ocean which is on the east coast in VN. That's okay because THEIR BASE WAS ON A SMALL PENINSULIA.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Classic Wayne Film
Review: Classic Wayne film. I have read other reviews which spend much time denouncing THE GREEN BERETS for not being histirically accurate in one way or another. Get real people, it's a movie not a documentary. This is a classic Wayne film with great action and a good story line. It's worth watching, it's great entertainment. If you want real, watch the History Channel. Every veteran I know, myself included, love this movie for what it's intended as, entertainment. Watch it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Terrible--not just politically, but cinematically too!
Review: John Wayne may always be seen by millions in America as the distilled essence of American patriotism. In other words, My Country Right Or Wrong. I'll not dissuade anyone from feeling that way if he or she chooses.

Nevertheless, while the Duke may have had his heart in the right place for making THE GREEN BERETS, he unfortunately let that blind patriotism and his politics get the best of him. This attempt at stirring up patriotic support for our guys in Vietnam comes across as not merely politically and historically phony but painfully corny. Wayne likes to think that Vietnam was like World War II--which, of course, was painfully wrong (even more so because he didn't even FIGHT in WW II). He wants us to believe that the VC and the NVA could be picked off like ducks in a shooting gallery, when that assumption in fact didn't even come close. And the sentimental scenes involving his dead comrades and a Vietnamese orphan resonate still today, not for how touching they were (because they're not) but because of how utterly sappy they are.

Reportedly, when this film was shown to the troops in Vietnam, many of them either laughed their heads off at Wayne's well-intentioned but utter phoniness or fired their M-16s at the screen. I've talked to several Vietnam vets who saw the film--none of them, and I do mean NONE OF THEM, thought it was accurate in the least. Beyond its politics and its historical inaccuracies, it is cinematically phony as well, with the "sunset in the East" final shot being the real capper.

Later films like PLATOON and FULL METAL JACKET showed a far more accurate and complex vision of our Vietnam experience as being about young men who were put in a hellhole and were not able to find any way out. That is what Vietnam was all about, not this simplistic, jingoistic propaganda feast. THE GREEN BERETS may be watchable for laughs (most of which would be unintentional), but that's all it's watchable for!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: BRAVE
Review: Only because I can't spell courageos. I absolutely love the way that John Wayne walks. His confident swagger makes me proud to be an American. Jingoistic, propaganda, righteous, self-serving? Ofcourse it is. Seems like a desperate attempt to make sense of 'nam. At the entertainment level, I think it's quite good. Although way exageratted, te film shows the humanity, compassion, and humor, that make life worthy in less than worthy situations. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT it's not. But this film came along at a time of collective national depression, as we began to realize that something was wrong with our involvement in Vietnam. This movie tried to show what little was right. Some of the military scenes are very accurate, the latter ones are not. Mis-identifying common weaponry, turning the solar system upside down, and barely scolding soildiers for sleeping through an attack, certianly didn't help this movie in the credibility area. Yet it's enjoyable in a cartoonish feel-good kind of way. Oh, great song!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good, But Flawed
Review: Although I have seen this picture well over a dozen times and although I think it's basically a good movie, I must be objective and admit that "The Green Berets" is basically a propaganda piece that at the time of its filming was an attempt to change public sentiment about our country's involvement in Vietnam. For this reason, as well as the healing period our country went through after Vietnam, the movie seems rather archaic and naive today. Those on the far left ridicule it. Those on the far right treat it with the reverence of a Biblical tale. The truth about "The Green Berets" is that it lies somewhere between these two extremes.

The Fort Benning, Georgia filmed training sequences appear to be as real as anything I ever saw while I was in uniform. The combat sequences, however, contained a fair share of errors, most notably the well-known "sun setting in the east" flub. The acting was rather wooden, especially from Wayne as well as Jack Soo, portraying the ARVN officer, and the plot meandered from being quite good in some parts to being downright silly in others.

The most important thing to remember about this movie is that it should be taken for what it is...a good war movie. To casually dismiss it as irrelevant or hopelessly out of step with the truth simply doesn't do it justice. In similar fashion, it's rather stupid to portray it as an homage to the American way of life and characterize those who point out this picture's many flaws as "un-American", as one previous review did. This picture is best enjoyed with the viewer's bias, be it liberal or conservative, turned off.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: utter garbage
Review: This is the worst war film I have ever viewed. It is flawed in every respect. The acting is shoddy. The stunt work is pathetic (using dolls instead of stuntmen), the special effects are absolutely pathetic. The helicopter crashing scene rates as the most amatuerish scene I have ever witnessed on screen. John Wayne is a favourite of mine, but I won't let that fact blind me to the rubbish this movie is.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good Movie
Review: This is a good war movie but John Wayne's fake toughness brings it down to 4 stars. That, and some very corny dialogue at times! Overall it has some great scenes and is a good Saturday afternoon movie.


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