Movies - We Were Soldiers

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	Movies - We Were Soldiers

We Were Soldiers is a 2002 war film that dramatized the Battle of Ia Drang during the Vietnam War. It was directed by Randall Wallace and stars Mel Gibson. It is based on the book We Were Soldiers Once...And Young by Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Galloway, who were at the battle.

Debates

We Were Soldiers is often regarded as one of the few films, along with John Wayne's The Green Berets
(1968), to offer a positive representation of the American presence in Vietnam. However, the movie is somewhat ambivalent about the morality of the war, presenting the North Vietnamese army as noble and brave, and concluding with a statement that the US soldiers did not fight for their country, but for each other.

The film can be criticized for omitting a large portion of Moore's book. The film depicts only the first half of the Battle of Ia Drang, which took place at Landing Zone X-Ray, and shows Moore's successful defeat of a North Vietnamese attack. It does not depict the second half of the battle: after Moore's troops had left the Landing Zone, the men from Company C, who had arrived to support Moore's troops, were left to march to Landing Zone Albany. Colonel McDade, the leader of these troops, made a tactical mistake on the trail, calling forward all of his commanders to interrogate two unarmed North Vietnamese soldiers. A sudden ambush cut off platoons from their officers, and the American troops suffered many casualties. By omitting this part of the battle, the movie suggests that it was an unambiguous victory, when in fact Moore himself considers it to have been a draw.

Cast

Mel Gibson
- Lt. Col. Hal Moore
Madeleine Stowe
- Julie Moore
Greg Kinnear
- Maj. Bruce 'Snake' Crandall
Sam Elliott
- Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley
Chris Klein - 2nd Lt. Jack Geoghegan
Keri Russell
- Barbara Geoghegan
Barry Pepper
- Joe Galloway
Don Duong - Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An
Ryan Hurst
- Sgt. Ernie Savage
Robert Bagnell - 1st Lt. Charlie Hastings
Marc Blucas
- 2nd Lt. Henry Herrick
Josh Daugherty - Sp4 Robert Ouellette
Jsu Garcia
- Capt. Tony Nadal
Jon Hamm - Capt. Matt Dillon
Clark Gregg - Capt. Tom Metsker

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for We Were Soldiers ]

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