Theo Robertson This is a curious mixture of good and bad . By 1989 the Vietnam war film had been blazing across cinema screens for over ten years and audiences were growing of tired of this genre in much the same way as America became literally tired of the ongoing conflict in South East Asia 20 years earlier . We'd already had the home front movie with THE DEER HUNTER and COMING HOME , war as expressionist horror film in APOCALYPSE NOW and black comedy in FULL METAL JACKET and GO TELL THE SPARTANS . You can see writer/director Patrick Sheane Duncan trying to do a grunts eye view of the conflict but is limited by budget so tries a new twist on this by having the entire action filmed as stock war footage What Duncan does manage to do is convey the absurdity of tours of duty . In the Vietnam era American individual soldiers would complete a tour of duty then would be replaced by another individual soldier . What this meant that American units would be entirely composed of soldiers would have differing tour lengths with some men almost completing their tour while their colleagues had several hundred days till the " wake up " which meant a complete lack of unit cohesion with the veterans in the unit having undisguised contempt for the newbies which they'd describe as FNGs' . The film illustrates this very well with the de facto platoon leader OD having little respect for the new LT and the camera team What the film doesn't do very well is giving a sense of time and place . Again the budget is the problem and at no time did I get the impression I was watching something take place in Vietnam in 1969 . Some people have argued that WE WERE SOLDIERS and THE GREEN BERETS were also set in the central highlands and wouldn't feature the dense humid jungles that's perceived as being a geographical feature of South East Asia but even so you're conscious that it probably wasn't filmed too far from the Burbank Studios in California and despite the use of strong language it has a look and feel of a TVM and for a film purporting to be true to life film footage it's not nearly stylised enough and it's difficult to believe this film influenced the likes of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT , CLOVERFIELD and other lost footage film

Arlis Fuson Watched this blindly knowing nothing about it and it wasn't too bad.Shot as a documentary, but it's not a documentary. All the story is completely made up and its about a camera man and a Lt. following soldiers out into the field on a mission. These soldiers are a tight knit group of green berets who do the dirty work most are scared to, but as you see as the film goes on these guys are as scared as anyone else is and they suffer and deal with the worst things the war has to offer. From casualties to killing men they have never seen, to surviving through the night this movie tells their tale.Writer/director Patrick Sheane Duncan did an extraordinary job here in my opinion. In his career he has touched on war before as well as music. His writing credits include Mr. Hollands Opus, Elvis the miniseries as well as A Home of our own. His direction here is meant to be that of a shaky nervous cameraman and one would expect to see a film like Cloverfield or Blair Witch BUT far from it, this movie does a perfect job of feeling like a documentary and feeling like a real motion picture at the same time. Not once was the camera shaky or hard on the eyes, it was very steady.The production here was well for a Vietnam movie, it was made two decades after the war but captured the essence well. The actors weren't familiar faces which helped with the documentary feel. All these men portraying soldiers did and a great job in my opinion.I liked a lot of things about the movie too, like how they showed the fear these men had, they didn't make them out to be arrogant heroes, they made them out to be honest and brave yet scared. Another good thing was race. In the field there is no black or white you are all brothers and this film touched on that nicely. I always find flaws in these movies and there were many little ones but it's to be expected. things like how well groomed these guys stayed and how clean their clothes were day after day, stuff like that does honestly makes me mad.The movie was good for a first watch, if you like dramas you will like it and if you like war movies it'll be a good one to check out. To me it did get extremely slow after the first ten minutes and didn't get laced with action until the last 30, which were great... 3 out of 10 stars.

bfishbine When I first watched this film I was in the 82nd at the time. It looked like an Army uncut documentary. My friends and I watched it several times looking for errors. The only error we could find (and it was a stretch) was the helicopter in the final scene had modified landing skids that were not developed till later. That helo also had a red checklist that probably would not have been used.The boots were tied right and worn-out in the right places. The rucks were heavy and carried like people who did that a lot. They wore their equipment right and each had the fitness level of an infantryman. The short-timer caught the spirit of what it meant to be short. Our short timers said the same stupid comments. "I'm so short I could halo off a dime" is funny the first time you hear it, not the 50th.Every squad seems to have the same people in it. This movie captured that to a "T." They talked way to much for a LRRP unit but it makes sense if you put grunts in front of a camera.Hands down one of the most realistic war movies ever made. In subtle ways this captures what it is like to be a grunt.

bluebottle1 As I recall, this was one of those movies that probably deserved a great deal more exposure than what it really got. It's timing was unfortunate. It came along on the heels of "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket" and even "Good Morning, Vietnam," so the various views of the Vietnam conflict had largely been done to death in the space of a few years and by much higher profile and higher budget filmmakers. The U.S. went from ignoring the conflict to a nationwide confession of guilt in the space of a year or so. Anyway, this was a good effort. It's low budget, but worthwhile, and, as the previous poster noted, the technique was the "first person" sort used in "Blair Witch" but done many years before that movie ever appeared.