14th Favorite Movie - We Were Soldiers

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Before I get to the movie, I want to remind everyone what this list is all about. About a year ago, I came up with a list of my 50 favorite movies. These were not what I considered to be the best movies ever made, but the ones that I consider to be my "favorites". I did not spend much time nitpicking whether I really liked #32 more than #33, but rather what 50 movies would make the list and what "tier" they would be in: top 5, top 15, top 25 etc. So just keep that in mind when you're thinking, "how could a great movie like x be #18 when a piece of garbage like y is #15"? My (and Bethany's) blog, my list, my rules.

All that to say... I am a bit surprised at how high I ranked this movie! I wanted to watch it with Bethany the other night but I must have loaned the DVD out to someone. If you have it, please give it back. We watched Saving Private Ryan instead, which altogether is probably a better movie than this one. But here is why I thought so highly of We Were Soliders:

-It does a great job of depicting the first battle in Vietnam to involve U.S. forces. And the way it ends says a lot about how the Vietnam War overall turned out for our country. But let me warn you, this film is not for the squeamish. Director Randall White is from the Saving Private Ryan school of shooting combat - in one scene, a soldier tries to move a fellow comrade who has been burned, and his skin comes right off his legs like a turkey drumstick.

-It has some great performances in it. Mel Gibson plays the Lt Col. Hal Moore, who leads a troop of mostly young soldiers who have never seen combat. Madeline Stowe is his wife back home. Sam Elliott plays another veteran officer, while Chris Klein plays a young up-and-coming soldier. Greg Kinnear is a helicopter pilot. Barry Pepper trades his sniper rifle from Saving Private Ryan for a camera, playing a journalist embedded in Vietnam. The DVD extras include interviews with some of the real-life people who are portrayed, and while this is a Hollywood big-budget film, it feels authentic.

-It shows the effects of the war on the soldiers' wives and girlfriends who are back home. Everyday, the army sends messengers bearing telegrams to notify the women whose loved ones have fallen in battle. Halfway through the movie, two of the women, one of whom lost her man already, decide to deliver the bad news themselves every day, face to face. This illustrated to me the concept of being "Wounded Healers" that Christian author Henri Nouwen talks about. The women are the right ones to provide healing to other women because they know them, can relate to their pain and can grieve with them.

-It has some insights into leadership. The line that was in all the trailers is when the new father/soldier Chris Klein asks veteran father/officer Mel Gibson how he feels about being a father and a soldier. Gibson replies, “I hope that being good at one makes me better at the other.” Many people have told me recently that they think that my being in youth ministry will help me be a better father someday, and I hope this is true. I guess I could relate a little bit to this line and the movie overall because I too have wondered how I would do balancing fatherhood and youth ministry someday. I am pretty sure writer/director Randall White is a Christian – he also wrote Braveheart and is currently working on a film version of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters due out in 2008. There are also a couple deleted scenes that lend weight to my theory – one is of Mel Gibson’s character praying with Chris Klein, and another features one of the wives singing Amazing Grace in church.

I think a big reason why I put this movie so high up on my list is because I feel that it deserves more attention… so go see it if it sounds like something you would enjoy. For some people, the presence of Mel Gibson in this film will prohibit them from watching it, just as Tom Cruise's real-life persona keeps some people from seeing his movies. I guess that is not something that has ever bothered me, I can get pretty sucked in while watching a movie and forget about the actor's personal life. I mention these two - Gibson and Cruise - because between the two of them, they are featured in 3 of the next 13 movies.