Like a more realistic "Green Berets" (spoilers)

While Green Berets was financially a much bigger success, Firebase has much better reputation. What's interesting is that they share a lot of similarities. Charismatic veteran fortifies a jungle outpost to defend it against overwhelming odds until it is finally over run. His right hand man "adopts" local orphan with a cute nickname, but he dies by film's end. In both movies outside support finally comes through at the very end after spending the whole film up to that point hurting for equipment and reinforcements due to the inaction of central command, There are also a few specific scenes that occur in both films including the main characters coming across a massacred village with an emphasis that the women had been raped. Up to that point Green Berets has at least a modicum of believability, but it really stretches to pretty big extremes with their secret mission behind enemy lines. The orphan remains in the care of the U.S. in Green Berets as kind of symbol of the United States promise to take care of the locals. This was during a naive optimistic view of the war. In the more recent movie the enemy takes the orphan. They reclaim their own and ironically will now most likely take up arms against the army that had recently adopted him. It's kind of like the anti Green Berets movie. They even specifically make reference to John Wayne at one point.