I'm a fan of Vietnam war films, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now are among my all time favorites. But this one just left me indifferent, a lot of it I feel flew over my head, felt too forced and just wasn't great film-making.
Its very clearly a film with a political message, and I think an important one at that. But it just keeps repeating it very explicitly over and over again and often goes off on a tangent, ignoring the underlying story and characters completely to trumpet that message yet again. It just feels far too forced at times, instead of flowing naturally through the subtlety of the story.
I think its a film that might speak more to you if you're from an African American background, in which case this review might have been different. But as a European growing up in a place where there was not a single person of a different skin color, I think a lot of the themes and references in this film flew higher over my head than B-52s over Hanoi.
As a film its mediocre at best.The acting is pretty good, by all of the 'bloods' and the scenery is exquisite. But that was largely it from the positive side. The war scenes are not very well done, and come off as cheap/cartoonish at times. The story goes off on too many side tangents with frankly preposterous plot points (in a film far too serious for those to be suitable) that drags it out into a 2.5h long yarn. A lot of that could have ended up on the editing room floor and would have made for a better film. There are numerous clear references to other Vietnam/war films (most notably Apocalypse Now and The Three Kings) and the film tries to take a little from here, a little from there, but in the end just ends up being a bit of a garbled mess with no clear sense of direction of what it wants to be.
Its very clearly a film with a political message, and I think an important one at that. But it just keeps repeating it very explicitly over and over again and often goes off on a tangent, ignoring the underlying story and characters completely to trumpet that message yet again. It just feels far too forced at times, instead of flowing naturally through the subtlety of the story.
I think its a film that might speak more to you if you're from an African American background, in which case this review might have been different. But as a European growing up in a place where there was not a single person of a different skin color, I think a lot of the themes and references in this film flew higher over my head than B-52s over Hanoi.
As a film its mediocre at best.The acting is pretty good, by all of the 'bloods' and the scenery is exquisite. But that was largely it from the positive side. The war scenes are not very well done, and come off as cheap/cartoonish at times. The story goes off on too many side tangents with frankly preposterous plot points (in a film far too serious for those to be suitable) that drags it out into a 2.5h long yarn. A lot of that could have ended up on the editing room floor and would have made for a better film. There are numerous clear references to other Vietnam/war films (most notably Apocalypse Now and The Three Kings) and the film tries to take a little from here, a little from there, but in the end just ends up being a bit of a garbled mess with no clear sense of direction of what it wants to be.
