Review #1,266: 'We Were Soldiers' (2002)

After Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan reinvented the way the brutality and chaos of war was depicted on the cinema screen back in 1998, Hollywood went slightly nuts for all things World War II. At one point, it felt as though we were getting one every other week, and fatigue naturally kicked in, especially since none measured up to Spielberg's visual masterpiece (if very flawed film), other than Terrence Malick's superior The Thin Red Line released the same year. By 2002, attention was moving towards the Vietnam conflict, an unjust and borderline psychotic war that resulting in heavy losses on all sides. It was a favourite topic for many filmmakers in the 1980's, and produced a few greats, but interest seemed to wane as we moved into the 90's. In 2002, We Were Soldiers was supposed to rekindle our fascination with Vietnam, but has since faded into a long list of half-forgotten war movies.

Based on the book We Were Soldiers Once... and Young by Hal Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, Randall Wallace's film attempts to cover the Battle of Ia Drang from three perspectives: the 400 American men fighting at the front, the 4,000 Vietnamese troops they're up against, and the wives at home fearing the arrival of a taxi cab bringing them unwanted news. The bulk of the action follows Moore (Mel Gibson), then a lieutenant colonel, through training his troops and eventually onto the front line, where intelligence is so sparse that they have no idea what they are up against. It turns out that the Americans are greatly outnumbered, and so begins one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war. He is later joined by reporter Galloway (Barry Pepper), who captured much of the conflict on camera as well as picking up a rifle himself. At home, Moore's wife Julie (Madeleine Stowe) intercepts all the letters informing the devastated wives of their loss to hand-deliver them herself.

We Were Soldiers feels like more of a complete overview on the battle thanks to this unique perspective, while the action is some of the toughest and most unflinching in the genre. Perhaps down to its more observational approach - apparently the events take place almost exactly how it played out in real life - the film often gets criticised and labelled as a pro-war movie. I don't feel that what we see is glamorising or promoting war in any way. On the contrary, it refuses to really to take a stand, and this is what makes Wallace's movie far less interesting than it should be. It all boils down to 'war is Hell', but most people know this already whether they have experienced combat or not. The battle scenes are intense, horrifying and well-staged, and demand to be admired from a technical point of view. But it's nothing we haven't seen before. Despite Chris Klein's failure to really convince as a human, We Were Soldiers features many impressive performances, most notably by Sam Elliott as Sgt. Major Plumley, a gruff Sam Elliott-type who mows down his enemies with a revolver while the rest of his men pack automatics, and Gibson himself, who helps tug on the heartstrings during quiet moments of reflection.


Directed by: Randall Wallace
Starring: Mel Gibson, Madeleine Stowe, Greg Kinnear, Sam Elliott, Chris Klein, Keri Russell, Barry Pepper
Country: USA/Germany

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,067: 'Hulk' (2003)

Back in 2003, before Marvel created their 'Cinematic Universe' and started to explore their more obscure, lesser-known characters, superhero movies were starting to hit their stride. Origin stories such as Bryan Singer's X-Men (2000) and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002), while certainly far from perfect, demonstrated just how fun these movies could be without sacrificing plot or character development for the sake of a set-piece. Ang Lee's Hulk took this idea a tad too far, delving into the psyche of its not-particularly-interesting protagonist and forgetting that this is a movie about a giant green rage-monster who smashes things to pieces.

Dr. Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) works with his former girlfriend Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) at the Berkeley Biology Institute, experimenting on cell repair using gamma radiation. Due to a mysterious, traumatic event when he was a child, Banner is haunted by the vague memories he has of his parents, now believed to be dead. Naturally, one of his experiments goes awry and he is exposed to a dangerous level of radiation, which allows him to turn into a big green monster whenever he gets angry. His father David (Nick Nolte) turns up alive to complete the experimentation he was prevented from completing by Betty's father Thaddeus (Sam Elliott), who imprisoned him for 30 years. Learning of David's return and Bruce's new power, Thaddeus will not stop at nothing to take them both down.

I remember quite liking Hulk when I first saw it back in the cinema, but watching it again 13 years later, I found it a convoluted, and quite frankly boring, mess. There are a couple of things to admire, such as Lee's attempt to translate the comic to screen with the use of multiple split-screen, but this device is employed too often, and in situations that don't really call for it. Nolte is also enjoyable to watch, as he is let loose to the point where it seems like he has wandered onto the set after a particularly heavy binge. However, the film spends far too much time with a mopey Bruce as he struggles with the memories of the past. When the action finally comes, the special effects just aren't up to scratch, even by 2003's standards, and the climax is a confusing muddle of giant clouds obscured even further by the fact that the picture is too dark to make out what is happening. Hopefully, if Marvel ever make a standalone movie with Mark Ruffalo, they will finally get the character right (fingers crossed for Planet Hulk!).


Directed by: Ang Lee
Starring: Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott, Nick Nolte, Josh Lucas
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #903: 'Frogs' (1972)

Despite the poster depicting a frog with a human hand hanging out of its mouth, American International Picture's Frogs is not about giant frogs. Instead, this is a nature-gone-mad movie featuring about 500 bullfrogs, along with an assortment of other creepy critters (lizards, snakes, spiders, birds, alligators) who begin to terrorise a wealthy family and an ecologist who happens upon them. The frogs of the title are a merely an annoyance and a constant presence, driving the residents of the island mansion on which the film takes place insane with their constant croaking.

Photographer Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott) is taking pictures of the local wildlife in a swamp located near to the estate of the wealthy Crockett family. Clint Crockett (Adam Roarke), the young and drunken heir to the family inheritance, accidentally knocks Pickett off his canoe and into the water with his speed-boat, and so takes him back to the mansion for a change of clothes. There, he meets the grumpy and wheelchair-bound patriarch Jason (Ray Milland), who voices his distaste for the slimy inhabitants of the surrounding fauna. Pickett discovers the body of a man sent by Jason to spray pesticide, and soon the Crockett's and their employees find themselves under threat from a variety of murderous beasties.

Although the promise is utterly ludicrous, Frogs is played with a straight-face for the most part, and is elevated by decent performances from Milland and Elliott - the former of which was a regular on the B-movie circuit at this point in his career and the latter showing us what he looks like without his trademark moustache. But the animal attacks are few and far between, clumsily edited and failing to generate anything in the way of jumps or scares. The majority of the film consists of the family complaining about the frogs while Jason groans and disapproves at everything, ignoring both the warnings of Pickett and the blatant unnatural occurrences happening all around them. For a film about killer frogs, it's better than it has any right to be, but this is tedious stuff for the majority of its running time.


Directed by: George McCowan
Starring: Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark, Adam Roarke
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie