We Were Soldiers
Starring Mel Gibson, Madeleine Stowe, Greg Kinnear, Barry Pepper, Sam Elliot

Directed by Randall Wallace, R

***1/2 out of 4 Stars

Released March 1, 2002

Running time: 138 minutes

***1/2

by Kevin Lang

We were young. We were brave. We were sons. We were fathers. We were husbands. "We Were Soldiers," the new film directed by Randall Wallace and starring Mel Gibson, managed to successfully echo these sentiments that were first presented in the movie's trailer. The film didn't lose itself by focusing on the politics of the war as most movies about the Vietnam War often do. It also didn't portray less than respectable soldiers who were perpetually getting high and going half mad in their alienation from the war. I'm not saying that this didn't happen, but what about the large numbers of soldiers who faced the war with courage and who fought bravely, not necessarily because of what they believed, but because their neighbors and brothers were there? What about the soldiers who fought not for the protesters back home, but to keep each other alive? Because as Mel Gibson echoes in the film, when you're over there, the only family that you have is one another.

The film began with a group of soldiers at home in the United States living with their families on a military base. I don't remember if the film stated where in the U.S. this base was, but my not knowing this detail turned out to be inconsequential to the overall effectiveness of the story. A large group of soldiers from the base would eventually come to form the 7th Air Calvary division of the U.S. Army. It was these soldiers that we first got to know. We watched them with their wives and children. We saw them celebrate their last night on the base. We watched as they, with hardened hearts, bravely left all that was home to them. These scenes significantly added to the emotional impact of the story, as they acted to round the characters, allowing us to better understand the significance of the sacrifice that these men were making. We were able to relate to them on a civilian level.

Based on the book "We Were Soldiers Once…And Young" by Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore (Retired) and civilian war correspondent Joseph L. Galloway, the film chronicled the events of the battle of LZ X-Ray in the la Drang Valley. We not only got to witness the horrific reality of the battle, but we were also able to experience the pain of the soldiers' families as they received word of the loss of their loved one. Randall Wallace effectively intertwined the homeland scenes with the battle, successfully transferring the emotion from one location to the other, never failing to sustain the pace of the story.

There were moments in "We Were Soldiers" that defined the meaning of bravery. Whether it was the Huey air crews who flew their choppers into areas where the medevac helicopters refused to go, or the soldiers on the ground who were so overrun by enemy troops that they fought with everything they had, including their bayonets, "We Were Soldiers" was a tribute to these men. The story did not have the overall scope and depth of Wallace's "Braveheart" script, but it was still a film that stands far above most of the recent Hollywood releases.

I can't help but like Mel Gibson. He chooses wisely the films that he makes and stars in. He is respectable in a Hollywood whose actors today are anything but respectable, and the films that he chooses to star in are always filled with characters that possess similar qualities. He is also not afraid to show in his films, the importance faith and the strength of family, two things that today's world seems to be less in touch with. Both of these things were at the heart of "We Were Soldiers," and they helped to make the film stronger, not to mention easier to recommend.

In the end I want to close with an excerpt from the book's prologue. It helps to emphasize the significance of this film in its view on war. Moore and Galloway wrote, "Many of our countrymen came to hate the war we fought. Those who hated it the most - the professionally sensitive - were not, in the end, sensitive enough to differentiate between the war and the soldiers who were ordered to fight. We knew what Vietnam had been like, and how we looked and acted and talked and smelled. No one in America did. Hollywood got it wrong every damned time, whetting politically twisted knives on the bones of our dead brothers."