Rating: 
Summary: Arguably the best Mel Gibson movie to date.
Review: This is not just another war movie.
I have seen "We were Soldiers..." twice on the big-screen. I own the soundtrack, book, and in about 2 months I will own the DVD.
The book is much more personal but the movie is undeniably incredible.
Mel Gibson ~outstanding~, Greg Kinnear ~excellent~, Sam Elliott ~flawless~. I knew that I had seen the actor playing Sergeant Major Basil Plumley before but until I saw the credits I didn't realize it was Sam Elliott. I believe Sam might have a shot at a nomination or an award.
Madeleine Stowe, Keri Russell, and the rest of the ladies did a great job of showing the results of war at home. This movie is a tribute to our Vietnam Veterans who have gone without thanks for far too long. I hope this is the beginning to a new era for them.
Rating:
Summary: A patriotic tribute
Review: This was an excellent movie. Its about time that Hollywood produced a movie that depicts the men who fought in Vietnam not as drug addicted, massacring imperialists, but as couragous young Americans who fought for something larger than themselves.
Too often popular culture denigrates the Vietnam war as something that was completely needless and a unworthy venture. However, when looked at more carefully,the Vietnam war easily could have come to a more successful conclusion if the campus activists and Jane Fonda's of America had not assured the North Vietnamese government that we were not fighting as a nation united. Leave it to Mel Gibson to make a movie that finally gives the veterans a fair shake. Definitely worth watching.
Rating:
Summary: Good. Very Good
Review: First of all, i want to say this movie compares to the likes of Saving Pivate ryan and Black Hawk Down, But Patton beat the pants off of it. I think this Movie accurately captures the Battle of Ia Drang Valley (dont think i dont know what i'm talking about, i did a VERY BIG report on it.)it even gives information of how it started (the massacre of french troops in the beginning. and it also captures the emotions of the wives of the men killed in battle. When i saw it in the theatre, during that emotional scene where Moore's (gibson) wife hands out those dreaded First Union Telegrams, the women in the theatre burst in to tears. The action lasts a long time and accurateley portrayes the taticis Officers used, including the broken arrow, which misfired.I say buy this if you like War movies (But if you are looking for a really great war movie check out Patton!)
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the most realistic modern battle scenes on film
Review: This is war and it truly is hell. Outnumbered on the field and backed by the politically driven Defense Department of the time, one battalion finds itself outnumbered and fighting for its life in the jungles of Vietnam. A recent reviewer here mistook what this movie was about. It is NOT about America's war in Vietnam and all the ideology behind it. Its about a battle that occurred in the early years of that war between a new type of specialized fighting unit and a very determined enemy. America wanted to engage the enemy for the first time and this is the battle. The only politics involved here is the decision not to declare a National Emergency thus allowing the Army's most experienced soldiers to leave at the end of their enlistments, when ironically they were most needed. This movie is about a battalion commander training his unit, getting orders and shipping off to war. It also gives an excellent look at what the wives had to endure during that terrible time. If one wants to look at the politics of this war, check out HBO's recent Path to War. Path to War shows the speech were LBJ sends this unit, the Air Cav, to Vietnam and the political reasoning behind it. It goes through LBJ's escalation and McNamera's change of heart on the winnablity of the war. Highly recommend it. Anyway, in realism this ranks up there with Saving Private Ryan. By reading the book you get a much better grasp of what happened as well as the story not told of what happened at LZ Albany. That encounter was even a worse then what happened at LZ X-Ray. All told this movie gives the feel of how horrible, horrowing and confusing first-hand combat can be. One decision can lead to winning the day, or as the movie shows, getting yourself cut off and most of your men killed. As for accuracy to what occurred, a group of soldiers that were there appeared on The History Channel's "Hollywood vs History" program and they concurred that it was 75-80% factual. 20 - 25% Hollywood. That's probably a good ratio indeed. Oh, and the little American Flag at the end was real, not Hollywood. And Sam Elliot deserves an Academy Award for his portrait of American Hero Sgt. Major Basil Plumley.
Rating:
Summary: Take Your Son
Review: Finally a Viet Nam war movie that doesn't treat us like freaks. This is not an anti-war movie. It simply shows how it was from the infantryman's point of view. Any so called intellectual that tries to make it more, just doesn't get it. I saw it by myself the first time, the second time I took my twenty-seven year old son. He was shocked at what we went through. Buy it. Buy several copies.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good, though it's no SPR or BHD.
Review: We Were Soldiers' main flaw is that it has the tendency to get a little too dramatically overdone. Some of the characters aren't as well developed as the movie would like us to think, and after a while, it gets pretty obvious who's going to live and who doesn't (surprising, considering this was based on actual events). Gibson, while delivering a terrific performance, plays Hal Moore as nothing short of a god among men, which gets a little annoying. But otherwise, this is a pretty decent anti-war film. Ever since Saving Private Ryan, war films have focused on graphically violent battle scenes, and We Were Soldiers is among the bloodiest. The combat scenes are well-choreographed and frenetic, though director Randall Wallace is still no Spielberg or Ridley Scott. Because of the bright color scheme Wallace uses, the flowing blood can be seen clearly throughout the whole film, and let's just say if you thought Black Hawk Down was too much to stomach, you should probably stay away from We Were Soldiers (especially the helicopter finale, I don't believe I've ever seen a war movie spill that much blood in a short amount of time)because it's even more graphic. We Were Soldier's main theme, that soldiers fight for their friends and the men next to them, is delivered in a fashion that's just too far overdone, Black Hawk Down did a better job with the same message. Still, in the pantheon of Vietnam war flicks, We Were Soldiers, while weaker than Platoon, still comes out above Full Metal Jacket and pretty much any other combat film set in that era.
Rating:
Summary: Great in some ways, troubling in others
Review: Based on a true story, "We Were Soldiers" recounts the first significant engagement between American and Vietnamese soldiers in 1965. In terms of realism and intensity, the battle scenes are truly state-of-the are and easily merit the same encomia as those in "Black Hawk Down" and "Saving Private Ryan." From a human interest perspective, the film does a wonderful job of portraying the anguish of military families who must face the fear and reality of their loved ones dying in battle. And to the film maker's credit they make a significant effort to portray the Vietnamese enemy as good guys who were just doing their thing. Oddly enough, the part of this movie I object to the most is the one that is frequently showcased in trailers and talk shows. In this scene, the protagonist, played by Mel Gibson, is asked by his daughter why people fight wars. He responds that war is what happens when bad men try to hurt other men and men like her daddy try to stop them. With these words, Mel Gibson not only provides his young daughter with an understandably innocent description of warfare in general, he also distills the entire theme of "We Were Soldiers" into a single sound byte. Mel Gibson is telling us that the Vietnamese were the bad guys and the Americans were the good guys who were trying to stop them. These lines disturb me when I consider the context in which this film was made. "We Were Soldiers" is following the newly blazed trail of neo-war movies that began with films like "Saving Private Ryan". This film and the World War II films that followed reversed three decades of objective, analytical war films such as "Tora Tora Tora", "Apocalypse Now", "Platoon", and "Casualties of War" and instead replaced them with a sentimental, jingoistic view of American military action. This was acceptable enough with "World War II" because there really isn't too much trouble distinguishing between right and wrong in that event. With "We Were Soldiers", however, Hollywood has now attempted to reshape the public's understanding of the Vietnam War along similarly benign and simplistic guidelines. At this point, many readers are probably thinking, "but this is a true story! How can you possibly state that it is misleading?" This is a perfectly valid question to which I would respond first that this film is based on a book which is itself misleading in many ways, and second, it is the EXCLUSION of facts that makes this film misleading. "We Were Soldiers" presents American troops as benign interventionists in a conflict they new little about. In doing this it excludes some ugly realities about what American presence in Vietnam meant for millions of Vietnamese. To begin, with the U.S. Congress estimates that in the course of the war the United States killed approximately 1,350,000 civilians, by all accounts a highly conservative estimate. In addition, there are numerous well documented instances crimes perpetrated by the American military against Vietnamese civilians including rape, murder, theft, unlawful imprisonment, the destruction of farmland, torture, contamination, and forced prostitution. While "We Were Soldiers" is wonderful for all the reasons that an action packed, loosely historical film should be, it is also problematic. If after seeing this film, you do not want to do some research in the library or online, at least see some films that offer different perspectives of the war. I know that for many of our veterans, unjustly blamed for something that was largely the fault of American politicians this film must seem like a welcome relief. Our veterans do deserve to be acknowledged, and its high time the nation apologized to them for the blame it heaped upon them for doing their duty. But distorting America's role in Vietnam by focusing exclusively on the heroics does not do them a favor. It does the entire country a great disservice.
Rating:
Summary: We Will Never Forget
Review: It highlights the spirit of America, now more important than ever we can see the sacrifices given for the good of one nation.
Rating: 
Summary: Heart Wrenching
Review: As much of the Vietnam War becomes forgotten except as it is experienced through the movies about it, this movie is an important addition to the genre. ... The story told here is an honest one about brothers in arms who went where their country sent them and did what they were asked to do. The message is not dissimilar to that seen in many WWII movies but severely lacking in movies about this conflict which seem to find more "truth" in such movies as "Platoon". While that, too, is a great film, it must be remembered that the acts portrayed in it were the exception, rather than the rule. "We Were Soldiers" examines the first battles of the Ia Drang Valley in 1965. Col. Hal Moore (Mel Gibson) and a force of some 400 men defend a vulnerable position from attack by as many as 4,000 North Vietnamese entrenched in the surrounding mountains. The tactics, the motivations, the emotions and, ultimately, the terrible cost are examined through the eyes of Moore, his top Sergeant (played flawlessly by Sam Elliot), Moore's wife (Madeleine Stowe), an intrepid chopper pilot (Greg Kinnear) and a photojournalist (Barry Pepper). The battle scenes are realistic - though not quite as harrowing as "Black Hawk Down" - and the characters are more clearly drawn than in that film. Overall, this is an excellent look at true heroism and moral conviction in the face of adversity and almost overwhelming odds.
Rating:
Summary: Unlike the previous viewer I opposed the Vietnam War
Review: I opposed the Vietnam war and still do but my opposite number is right--this is a great movie (I also suggest the book and the ABC special where the soldiers return to the Ia Drang valley after thirty years) This movie isdedicated to the Americans AND Vietnamese who died during the battle of the Ia Drang. It is thoughtful, respectful of the enemy and gives our soldiers the credit they were denied when they came home. I have gotten into rows with "Anti-War" friends who protest any effort to glorify our soldiers. They talk the talk but basically were chickens--with ideology but no empathy. Communism has nothing to do with it. whatever The Vietnamese were as the book says a brave and worthy foe--and our soldiers (who the chicken anti-war movement jeered) were brave and worthy--heroes in what I regard as a monstrous war. I was crying after the movie. I was ashamed I did not go to Vietnam--even though I would have gone only as a medic.
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