We Were Soldiers

[Nidan1]

I see we are still at it.

Here is my final contribution to this thread;

In war people die.

Americans are still divided over our involvement in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese still love us even to this day.

America is the biggest guy on the block, we are an easy target.

Everything we are talking about is now history, we cant change it or re-write it no matter how hard we try.

Nationalism is a fact of life on this planet, no matter how hard people try to deny it.

This is a computer game forum, and tomorrow we'll all be too busy refreshing the browser to even think about this anymore.

I believe that one day all men will finally learn to live together.

[zee]

I love you people who say "oh this movie reeks , shoty battle scenes, shotty action ohh!! i know more then they do to make a perfect movie!"

how bout i go get you actuall War films from chechneya and show you the real thing since you seem to think every war movie is "shotty hollywood"

well watch the real thing then you prick watch real people get blown up into peices and die in front of your eyes. and yet you will probably still say "oh that was shotty dieing "

please just shut up.

ive seen what real war looks like through home movies of Cheychen Reble's killing russians in battle. probably the closest to hell you can see without being there yourself.

and this movie was pretty damn close to what war looks like.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

Actually it sounds more to me as if your buttons are being pushed because I don't agree with you or something. I take no offense at your opinion, nor to their (the authors) stance, but neither do I agree with it.

[Bruno Weiss]

CM Player wrote:

your incorrect prejudice

So you can't overcome my opinion with a flawed rationale, you therefore resort to attacking me personally. No where in my statements did I attack you. Such desperation demonstrates precisely what I'm stating. It is your buttons that are being pushed because you simply cannot accept that there are differing opinions from yours and of these authors you apparently hold in such high esteem, and rather than accept the facts of life you then rationalize conducting yourself in an unacceptable manner. Doesn't add much credibility to your assertions.

[Bruno Weiss]

Nidan1 wrote:

I believe that one day all men will finally learn to live together.

Live long and prosper Nidan1

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

So you can't overcome my opinion with a flawed rationale, you therefore resort to attacking me personally.

I didn't mean to attack you personally. I was using the word prejudice in its original, neutral form: a preformed judgement which influences our interpretation of new data. In that sense we all have prejudices, some correct and some incorrect. We couldn't live without them. I'm aware that the word 'prejudice' also has a strong negative connotation when associated with _racial_ prejudice in the USA. But that wasn't the sort of overtone I intended.

I believe you have formed an incorrect opinion about that book, which you haven't read, on the basis of a casual comment by me, and now that opinion is being reflected in all your comments on this subject. I've tried to explain that the authors (and I) meant something rather different than what you seem to believe they meant, but you haven't yet acknowledged that. Hence an incorrect prejudice is blocking your understanding. I wouldn't press it except that I feel I've done the book a disservice through my poorly expressed comment, and I'm trying in my stupid and hopeless way to get across what it's actually about.

Let's stop beating each other up over this. We're obviously on different wavelengths and are talking past each other. I don't want to ruin your day, and I doubt you want to ruin mine. Hope the weather is nice where you live today.

[Bruno Weiss]

Okay, explanation accepted and it makes sense, but there is a difference between prejudice and logical thought analysis which arrives at a conclusion. Which is which becomes problematic. But thanks for splaining, no offense taken. Sorry to be quick on the draw then.

No, no one's day is worth ruining over any of this. As Nidan1 correctly points out, this is all cosmic stuff anyway that'll be forgotten shortly and we'll all be playing CMBB, arguing about CMBB, investigating the Eastern Front of WWII, and Vietnam will be once again on this here forum, be long forgotten.

Alright if it is important to you, then splain what it is you want me to see in this. I read your quote from the authors. What I saw, was "they were a worthy enemy." I don't necessarily agree. "They, too, fought and died bravely." Maybe in the context of this one battle, but in general I'm not sure I agree with that statement either. "This is our story and theirs." Don't have any problem with "our" story, I"m just not interested in theirs. Nor do I agree with the recently popular sentiment (at least politically), to view Vietnam as we now view Germany or Japan, but that may or may not be getting far afield of the subject.

Nidan1 is right that the subject still raises a host of emotions and sentiments. No matter how one views it, or what opinion one holds on the subject, one is bound to run into a debate when the subject is brought up. Which, is generally why I don't discuss it, and have not joined the VFW as many of my compatriots have (due to an argument in a bar of all things many years ago between a bunch of VFW WWII vets and a bunch of Nam vets I was with), and due to a good many experiences I've had, both in uniform and since the time I tossed it out. I took Gibson's comments as offensive and I still do, which is what began all this. Otherwise, I "think" I understand what the authors were trying to do as I said a couple posts back, but I just don't agree with them. They do however, have a right to their stance just as I also have a right to mine.

Anyway, yes the weather here is beautiful today. Not near 100 as it has been, and we've recently had rain which was mana from heaven. Hopefully, it is a fine day where you are at also. Live long and prosper (y).

[ August 31, 2002, 10:57 AM: Message edited by: Bruno Weiss ]

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

Live long and prosper Nidan1

Live long and prosper Bruno Weiss.

Perhaps one day we can take out our frustrations on each other in a TCP/IP battle or two? :cool:

[ August 31, 2002, 11:11 AM: Message edited by: Nidan1 ]

[Bruno Weiss]

PBEM'ers are better.

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

PBEM'ers are better.

OK, we will have to schedule one.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

Alright if it is important to you, then splain what it is you want me to see in this.

Thanks for the invite but all the steam's gone out of me. It's raining and the air smells nice. Glad we could clear that up. ttfn

[Bruno Weiss]

Okay Nidan1, sounds good. Yeah, same here CM Player. Glad it's a nice day there. Just wait till it's raining in Stalingrad, then, then we'll have ourselves a grand time.

[JasonC]

"a cheap way to get emotions out of the audience"

If you read the book, it will get emotions out of you all right. Far more than that snippet. And not at all "cheaply".

In fact, one thing you will learn is that there was nothing cheap about it, in personal costs. Moore knows every one of his men, they all know each other, their personal stories and how the war hit them all is all there in detail. You can't see any of them as mere ciphers, counters, "units", after you have read the stories of their lives.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by zee:

Voxman either u have Very bad taste , and dont like war movies.. or ur just a prick.

the movie was very good and i hope it wins an academy award for it well deserved.

There's no way it deserves an Oscar. Oscars are given out for acting and skill at motion picture making - not for the importance of the story. That is why SPR lost to Shakespeare in Love for Best Picture. Shakespeare in Love was a much better movie than SPR, though the story was far less "important."

We Were Soldiers was at least better than Black Hawk Down, which really had nothing too significant to say other than "hoo-ah" and "war sucks." I've seen enough killing on TV and in movies to be bored by death scene after death scene for no apparent purpose. The connection to the families at home in We Were Soldiers was one of the most interesting things about the film.

The big disappointment for me was that they kept giving place names on the screen, but not telling us how these locations fit together on a map. Why tell us that a scene is set in such-and-such location, if we have no idea where that location is in relation to the others? It practically demands that you read the book - and then when you do, you find the movie has little relation to the movie anyway.

Another Vietnam veteran on this board (combat helicopter pilot) described WWS as a "pornography of violence" and I think the description was apt. The scene of the French .30 cal gunner getting his head blow apart was appropriately gruesome, but is that really acting worthy of an Oscar?

Surely there were other movies with much more of significance to say, and much more expertly put together, than We Were Soldiers, which was really a very pedestrian description (and not an accurate one) of a few days battle in Vietnam. A story worth telling, yes, but not one that is particularly difficult for a film maker to do (aside from the logistics and special effects - but if special effects made for a Best Picture, then Annie Hall would never have won over Star Wars.)

[ August 31, 2002, 12:25 PM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[mcgivney]

Hi mom!

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by mcgivney:

Hi mom!

You couldn't be more wrong. There is no reason to close this thread, though it may migrate to the general forum.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

[

We Were Soldiers was at least better than Black Hawk Down, which really had nothing too significant to say other than "hoo-ah" and "war sucks."

I thought Black Hawk Down was more subtle than you make it out to be, but it was at the level of form more than story.

BHD was not just saying 'huah' and war sucks, it was asking the question whether what Plato said was true: that only the dead have seen the end of war.

History begins to look like a repeating circle, always doomed to repeat the same disaster of armed conflict, which is visually portrayed in the film through recurrent CIRCLE imagery. The roter blades, the spinning of falling choppers, the circuitous routes taken by rescue columns through the city, circling camera motion, curling smoke from spent cartridges, miniguns, McKnight's 'move out' hand signal, all the talk of perimeters, and many more local details of imagery showed the idea of spinning, also spinning in one's tracks, not getting anywhere and falling into violence and confusion.

This circular motion is constantly interweaved with the theme of expenditure and waste. Waste of lives, waste of blood and even waste of ammo. We see cartridges by the hundreds falling even as outside bodies are falling by the dozens. No one is winning here, everyone is losing.

This culminated among other things in the scene where Garrison futiley tries to help by wiping the blood off the floor in the operating room. He wipes (circularly) but can't wipe up the blood. All he does is spread it around on the floor. It's frustrating, just as at many points the film refuses to give me the satisfaction I as a viewer want. It turns in other directions. This blood on the floor, with Garrison, the General in command of the task force, is a comment on the whole mission. What happens when we try to help prevent death and bloodshed, but just end up making it worse. It's not assigning blame, just asking the question.

There is also another formal study based on the different levels of view of what is going on. (rather like the camera views in CM). We have the command center, the satellite views, the views from command helos and street level views. The problems of communication, situational awareness and abstraction are studied very interestingly, but I won't try to go into it more.

Of course there are also the mentorship stories of Eversman and Stebbins who each learn lessons while in the company of a Delta guy. These stories aren't entirely uninteresting, but it's hard to snap up all the details on a first viewing. In any case it's not all nihilism, some value is found in virtues like loyalty and comradeship.

Finally I'd like to mention one of my most 'controversial' observations about visual symbolism. Eversman's friend Jamie, who is playing basketball at the beginning, looks pregnant with the ball under his T-shirt. Normally you shouldn't read too much into this but with this director (who did Alien, for example) pregnancy and bloody birth are potent symbols. So later when Jamie bleeds to death of a severed leg artery, there is something of giving birth there. He's on the table while the medic's hand is deep inside his wound, he's screaming. It's filmed to remind you of birth. It's as though war and killing, are getting bound up in bloodiness and the act giving birth (If you 've witnessed a birth you might not think this connection is so far fetched).

These are just a few of the many ways that the story is quite interesting formally. You can also look at how the story goes from dead starved Somalis in the opening scenes, to coffins of Americans at the end. More circles. So to get back to the initial question, about war...this is a kind of a philosophical study, dealing in absolutes, like the circle, the perfect form, and how they get permuted into an imperfect, terribly messy world.

But I'm rambling here by this point. There's enough here for one of you that's in college to expand it and throw together a paper and get an A. Ha. Hope someone enjoyed it. Comments?

[ August 31, 2002, 01:17 PM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

[Michael Dorosh]

You believe in astrology too, don't you!

That's a very interesting analysis, actually. Yes, I think it is definitely more form than substance (ignoring your entire line of thought rather conveniently), but by this point, haven't many viewers seen lots of "form"? It made me long for The Thin Red Line!! Two very different perspectives.

I may be too harsh on Black Hawk Down after seeing it only once and reading the book just once, but I guess I don't find the notion that war is hell and man is mortal all that big a mental challenge, if you know what I mean. Some movies take those as givens....it's what they do with those themes that make them interesting. With We Were Soldiers, what they did with that theme was show nobility in the face of that adversity. BHD seemed to show the adversity and little else. I am not saying war is noble, but I wouldn't say it can't be portrayed that way, or more correctly, men in war can't be portrayed that way. They obviously can, and it was the characters in SPR that made the film - and WWS. Look at the reaction to Plumley, the most positive thing people have posted about it.

BHD, on the other hand, had limited characterization, which was to its detriment.

[ August 31, 2002, 01:10 PM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[CMplayer]

Well Michael, I think your concerns are valid if you only see it once. But the characters become clearer after a few viewings and you start to recognize who's who under the kevlar and goggles. Also, I thought there was some nobility, or whatever you want to call it, there. Quite a lot actually. You might have found it corny, but the guy with the cast cutting it off with a knife to be able to get out to help save his friends, or the guy with an asthma inhaler (a true detail btw, probably the only Ranger in world history with asthma) both show ordinary people, with very fragile bodies, rising to the occasion. McKnight's scorn at a superior when told he doesn't have to 'go back out there' and then the way McKnight personally greets Captain Steele upon his relief with 'I heard you needed a lift', and then Steele in turns greets Eversman were all powerful. Also, even the basic qualities of leadership and courage are portrayed beautifully in that film. Those are all things that lift it above just 'war is yuchy' in my view. Not to mention the perennial military theme of self sacrifice.

[ August 31, 2002, 01:32 PM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

[Voxman]

Originally posted by zee:

Voxman either u have Very bad taste , and dont like war movies.. or ur just a prick.

the movie was very good and i hope it wins an academy award for it well deserved.

Zee the only movie worse than that this year was the Black Hawk Down.

Did you see it ?

It reminded me of the old cowboy and Indian movies where the wagons would circle and the Indians would be dopey enough to ride around and around until shot. If you have seen these bad westerns you saw Black Hawk Down.

However, a good war movie was "Saving Private Ryan".

[Voxman]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

There's no way it deserves an Oscar.

We Were Soldiers was at least better than Black Hawk Down, which really had nothing too significant to say other than "hoo-ah" and "war sucks."[/QB]

BHD was typical Americano military spew put to film.

Mike you wouldn't know a good movie ( or women ) if it fell on your face and wiggled.

Mike, just please don't tell me you think the Calgary Highlanders are better than the Ottawa Highlanders, just please don't do it man!

The Mel Gibson movie was a loser, the makers of the film have already admitted what the problems are and that they regret making it. They got killed at the box office.

The key problem they site is the battle scenes were not as good as "Black Hawk Down"....NO ****

The battle scene in When We Were Soldiers were pathetic to the extreme.

When I went to see "Gladiator" I wanted to see a Gladiator flick and got it!

When I went to see "Mel Gibson" I wanted to see a good war flick. Instead I got crappy battle scenes. PERIOD!

To the Americano's reading this ,,,,,,TOUGH!

Go blow up Iraq again and watch it on TV, now that's Entertainment

I rate it TWO Thumbs Down!!

Regards,

Voxman

[ August 31, 2002, 03:04 PM: Message edited by: Voxman ]

[Captain Wacky]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

You believe in astrology too, don't you!

That's a very interesting analysis, actually. Yes, I think it is definitely more form than substance (ignoring your entire line of thought rather conveniently), but by this point, haven't many viewers seen lots of "form"? It made me long for The Thin Red Line!! Two very different perspectives.

I may be too harsh on Black Hawk Down after seeing it only once and reading the book just once, but I guess I don't find the notion that war is hell and man is mortal all that big a mental challenge, if you know what I mean. Some movies take those as givens....it's what they do with those themes that make them interesting. With We Were Soldiers, what they did with that theme was show nobility in the face of that adversity. BHD seemed to show the adversity and little else. I am not saying war is noble, but I wouldn't say it can't be portrayed that way, or more correctly, men in war can't be portrayed that way. They obviously can, and it was the characters in SPR that made the film - and WWS. Look at the reaction to Plumley, the most positive thing people have posted about it.

BHD, on the other hand, had limited characterization, which was to its detriment.

I thought WWS was a very average film. I wouldn't mind watching it again, but there just wasn't anything great about it, or anything that I found particularly engrossing. I didn't think that the movie gave a good picture as to what was actually going on during the battle and the problems facing those on the ground.

BHD, on the other hand, was a very good movie IMO. The actual fighting was done better than in WWS. It was convincing in the way that I found the battles in SPR convincing. I could follow what was going on in the city, as something would go wrong, the Rangers would rush over, and then something else would go wrong way the hell over there. That gave BHD a sense of continuity that I think WWS lacked.

I agree with you though that BHD's weakness was its characterization, which is a problem in almost all war movies done outside of the "squad" scale. There are simply too many faces pushed onto the audience too fast for them to really develop any empathy for the guys. A Bridge Too Far is a great war movie, but it still suffers from this problem.

[wodasini88]

Bruno I'm sorry but if you think the NVA don't deserve to be called honorable fighters then neither do the US soldiers. We've done just as bad things throughout history. I say learn from those mistakes and try not to commit those terribles acts. And give honor to those who fight bravely for what they believe in.

[imported_argie]

Ummmm... I really don't like when all you conspirates to put this threads out of my view here in the CM Forum...

BFC guys must be setting mirrors as crazies as this thread abides here, instead where it belong.

[von Lucke]

To russellmz, CM Player, et.al.:

Truth is often stranger (and more corny) than fiction. Stereotypes wouldn't be stereotypical if everybody didn't recognize them as common. It's obvious I didn't read the book (tho I intend to), and if those elements I criticized as unbeleavable did happen that way, then I appologize.

As for some of my other comments:

I know they created another LZ with room for only two choppers at a time, the "only two choppers in the 7th AC" comment refered to the film only showing the same two pilots (Snake**** and TooTall) flying every single mission --- including the last-second-save-the-day gunship run.

I suppose my main objection with this movie is that it takes what should be a harrowing story of survival in combat against ovewhelming odds, and turns it into a pointless slaughter-fest (human wave attacks galore!) where the tactical situation is never really explained. And yes, I thought the wives on the home front scenes were a bit too maudlin. This movie just shoots for too many emotional change-ups that only serve to make things more confusing.

And no, I don't expect them to actually film on location: The standard is to shoot in Phillipines or Thailand. I've been both places, and grew up in SouCal, and believe me, you can tell the difference!

Zee: Chill out man, it's only a movie! And that's Sergeant First Class prick (15 years US Army, ret.) to you maggot!