He called this movie, as well as Platoon "pathetic". He said that the movie that most accurately depicts his experience in Vietnam is We Were Soldiers. I haven't seen this movie as of yet, but I wanna know what you guys think about this.
-Carter Thomas Krebs, From WIsconsin
Why? This movie was not specifically about the VietNam war, but about war's effects on the young men sent to fight them...VN was the most recent, and seriously divided the country, so it was for timeliness, not accuracy.
Generally, soldiers return either emboldened or broken and bitter, all in one piece or physically damaged, proud or ashamed - but none come back exactly as they left- that is the real message here.
You would be better served by talking to some steel town residents of the same age, and get their feelings on what has happened to their homes in the last 50 years....chances are you'll find much of the same issues.
I've talked to some veterans too about Vietnam movies. The only thing they all agreed on was that the guy who played the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket nailed the part.
shareThat guy is R. Lee Ermey and he was not just playing a part, he was reliving his own memories... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000388/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm
A movie about a war, any war, does not have to accurately depict actual events of the war. Actual war events told as they happened can be quite boring, as a matter of fact, without much entertainment value. A movie about a war, or about anything else, only has to tell a good story in order to be a good movie. This was a good movie because it told a good story with interesting characters and some great performances. Your mistake may have been expecting a documentary rather than just a good story well told. As a Vietnam veteran myself, I loved this movie. There are parts of it that I will never forget. It gets my seal of approval.
shareGood to hear a positive review from a vet. As a civilian, I found this movie to be excellent. I was only a teen when I first saw it, but even then I felt that it captured something I hadn't seen (and haven't seen much since) in war movies. It was about the struggle upon returning to normality. It wasn't just about never being the same person again, but about the choice probably every soldier makes in whether they tell the truth about their experiences, or whether they sell the story that everyone would prefer to hear. DeNiro carried that off with an amazing performance.
At least, that's what I think. I would be curious to hear what you think.
I remember while visiting my grandfather at a vets hospital back in the early 80's and was alone in a common room and innocently turned to this movie while switching the channels on the tv
A group of vets came in (most were Korean and WW2 vets with a few Vietnam vets in the mix) and all of them hated this movie. Most hated the russian roulette scene, but they also bitched about the uniforms (none were correct), and Deniros appearance. It was a very interesting learning experience for sure.
I just watched it, again, first time was probably a couple of decades ago. This time I listened to director commentary afterward, and heard that as far as he knew, these 'russian roulette' events didn't actually happen. They were just added to make movie more dynamic.
I'd rather they'd have made up a war, rather than imply this was what happened at real Vietnam War.
What about Apocalypse Now?
shareFor what it's worth, my father was a decorated Vietnam vet and his favorite movie of all time was Platoon. I never was able to ask his opinion on The Deer Hunter. However I hated The Deer Hunter.
shareMy grandfather served two tours in Vietnam and said Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Casualties Of War were the most accurate films he had seen about the war. The films he called the most innacurate were The Deer Hunter, Good Morning Vietnam, and The Green Berets, but understood that realism wasn’t the point of the first two aforementioned films; The Deer Hunter in particular very realistically portrayed post-war life far better than wartime life, according to him. The only one he took offense to was The Green Berets, which he called “hollywood propaganda bullshit”.
shareWhat's funny is how different soldiers' experiences shape their perception of what movies are more or less realistic to their experiences.
I see a lot of comments in here from people who state that some of these movies are tripe because it didn't capture what they experienced in the war. Others claim that it's all Hollywood propaganda that glorifies war because it also wasn't what they experienced in the war.
Funnily enough, few people critical of some of the most celebrated or poignant war movies ever made seem to take into consideration that their experience may not reflect every other soldier's experience.
But I guess that's just how it is when some people are unable to separate the deviations of life from the looking glass.
Not a vet or ex serviceman but as a history buff I found the film flawed & naive in many respects.
* The main characters seem to go from civilians to war in an instant. No basic training etc. For a film that wastes a lot of time on stupid stuff and is so long it doesn't make sense.
* The Russian roulette scenes are comical rather than harrowing. Also, why would the Vietnamese guards even give their prisoners guns?
It had some ok moments but overall it's a mess and very boring.