Whoa.
I watched this movie somewhat on a whim; I had seen the tail end of one movie that happened to be on television and was trying to find something else to watch since I didn't feel like watching Breaking Dawn, which was what had come on after the aforementioned movie. So I decided to look at what was on the DVR, and We Were Soldiers was one of the movies, so I decided I might as well watch it.
So I did. I really liked it, actually. It was quite something. It's a Vietnam War movie. I know I've claimed in the past that I'm not a particular fan of war movies, yet for some reason I still watch them. I've seen Saving Private Ryan (Tom Hanks and Matt Damon), Full Metal Jacket (Vincent D'Onofrio, somewhat briefly), Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July (Tom Cruise), Jarhead (Peter Sarsgaard and Jake Gyllenhaal, among others) and maybe a couple others I'm forgetting. A small part of The Deer Hunter. Some of these I liked or disliked more than others (Apocalypse Now, for example, I thought was a colossal waste of time... three whole hours!!!). Saving Private Ryan lived up to its reputation of being a famous movie, Full Metal Jacket grew on me, somewhat surprisingly, Born on the Fourth of July was a bit of a different take on war movies, Jarhead was also good and I enjoyed the fact that Peter Sarsgaard was in it. But I digress.
Back to We Were Soldiers. For awhile I've felt that I should try to learn more about the Vietnam War, by various means. Some of that includes watching movies about/set during it. Within the last year, I also watched the PBS Vietnam War documentary series which I found to be highly informative, although I feel like I should've taken notes. One of the things that stuck with me from that documentary series was the shade of green of the American military uniforms -- I just thought it looked quite nice, so I wanted to get something in that same shade of green, ideally also in a similar style to the uniform shirts. Some time after watching the series, I happened to find a jacket matching those criteria at the thrift store! That was cool, even though it's not a Vietnam-era jacket. And it's comically large, but I've safety-pinned it to take in the back and have rolled the sleeve cuffs to somewhat mitigate that. The pockets are out of this world, especially for someone used to women's clothing. I wouldn't even really have to carry a purse if I wore that jacket! I haven't worn it much yet because it's not super warm and also doesn't have a hood (so no use for rain), but as spring proceeds hopefully I can get some use out of it. It'd be cool if I could get my hands on some replica 60s antiwar buttons to put on it. And a Bobby Kennedy for president button. That'd be cool.
That was a bit of a digression too. I really liked the movie; I think it's on the same level as Saving Private Ryan, and I think maybe it even edges out Saving Private Ryan slightly, as far as subject matter goes -- the Vietnam War interests me a bit more than World War II does. Both movies were pretty brutal/gruesome in parts, both definitely had me holding my breath and my heart racing during a number of the battle scenes.
I think the title of this movie is nicely poetic, which you don't always get with war movies -- "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young" being the full phrase/title of the book the movie was based on. It reminds me of some kind of poem. (maybe it actually is from a poem?)
This movie was actually a somewhat unique/different take on war movies due to some of the cinematic techniques utilized in it. I really liked the music/scoring/soundtrack -- it really enhanced the movie and it was done in a way that I think is sort of unconventional for war movies, or at least as far as the other ones I've seen go. The music/soundtrack/scoring was graceful and orchestral. In a number of scenes/parts of scenes, the score would be the prominent audio and the sounds of the battle were faint/in the background, which created an interesting dramatic effect; again, something that I don't think is that common in the genre of war movies. Sometimes the motion would be slowed down as well. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that the juxtaposition of the graceful, orchestral music and the chaos and violence of a battle was quite striking to me.
The movie has a beginning section set at a military base in the US as the soldiers prepare to be sent off to war. Then most of the rest of it is set during the course of a single battle -- Ia Drang in 1965. It was based on real events; some of the names I recognized from prior reading/documentary-watching. Maybe halfway through the movie, at some point in the middle, a journalist -- war correspondent -- shows up to cover the battle. I wasn't quite expecting that, but that was kind of a cool touch since I would like to become a journalist myself, although not necessarily a war correspondent. While it could be interesting to be a war correspondent in the present day (covering the Middle East, most likely -- like Arwa Damon, who is pretty badass and whose work I should pay more attention to) or could have been interesting to have been a war correspondent in the Vietnam War, I think it would be/have been interesting in a terrifying way. The whole aspect of being in the middle of a war and all. We Were Soldiers conveyed that pretty well. The journalist portrayed in this movie was Joe Galloway, whose name sounded familiar so I must've read about him in the past or saw him mentioned in the Vietnam War documentary series. More accurately, he was a photojournalist, and in the movie he's depicted as taking photos with a Nikon (!) camera, which was also sort of an interesting thing since I happen to have a Nikon camera. It really did make me wonder what it might've been like to actually be a Vietnam War correspondent. And also about media ethics in that context.
As an aside, I've also read about Vietnam War reenactments, which I think is an interesting concept because that's not the most common war to reenact. Yet there are some people who do indeed reenact it and there's actually a documentary about them ("In Country") that I should watch at some point. The people who were making said documentary had to dress up and act as period-appropriate war correspondents (although they were allowed to use their modern camera equiment) during the reenactment, which I thought was pretty cool -- perhaps someday I could participate in a reenactment like that.
I said/thought to myself "holy fuck" a number of times during the course of watching this movie, it was that intense. But it was quite a good movie, and honestly I'd be open to watching it again. I'm not quite sure I'd really want to watch Saving Private Ryan again; I think I mentioned that in my review of that movie right after I had watched it, which you can find on this blog somewhere. I've read that some people consider Requiem for a Dream to be a movie that they only want to watch once and never again, although that one I have rewatched a number of times and would rewatch it more in the future if the mood strikes me and I have the time for it.
In a way, I'd say the movie kind of felt like a mix of Saving Private Ryan, Full Metal Jacket (mostly setting-wise), and Requiem for a Dream -- it had a similar rawness like Requiem.
The cinematography differed a bit from the other Vietnam War movies I've seen. Perhaps this was at least in part because We Were Soldiers was a 2002 movie, and the others were made earlier in time -- Full Metal Jacket was 1987, Apocalyse Now was 1979. Those two movies, I remember the cinematography as being more saturated/vibrant, in terms of colors. We Were Soldiers had a color palette of mainly warmer greens, which was also sort of different, because I feel like the other two movies had slightly cooler greens. In a few scenes, you could see that blood had splashed onto the lens of the camera a little bit, which was sort of an interesting touch.
The end of it was well-done and I will admit that I cried a little bit. I usually do not cry about movies, although I can recall crying a bit towards the end of watching Titanic once.
Throughout the movie are interspersed scenes of the military wives back at home, and I thought their clothes were interesting -- mid-60s fashions for housewives, so not the more hippie-ish stuff that younger people, like college students would have worn during that era.
I've written nearly all of this fresh from watching the movie (I had to go look up the name of the specific battle this movie was based on), so now I'm going to go read a bit about the background of it and perhaps gain some additional context/knowledge about its production and that kind of thing. And find the name of that somewhat haunting song played over a few of the scenes.
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