War is nothing like it use to be, the act of military aggression has changed over the years. But no matter what, lives on both sides will be lost in hands of the combatants. This is where the assassination of President Kennedy and the Vietnam War changed everything in the 1960s.

We Were Soldiers is based on the nonfiction novel by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Joseph L. Galloway which follows Moore training and leading a battalion of young men for the Battle of Ia Drang, the first major battle of the Vietnam War.

Happy Veterans Day to all of our past, present and future veterans! This is a long overdue recognition of this film because I’ve been wanting to watch it and talk about it afterwards. Now that day is here as I’m typing my thoughts on We Were Soldiers, a film that is favored by many Vietnam veterans. I watching it when I was a kid back when my dad and my grandfather were at the house after they bought it on DVD. They let me watch it with them and never told me to go back in my room. I don’t much else about it until I rewatched it on Paramount+. It’s hard to believe the film is 21 years old and it’s actually a great tribute to those who fought and died in Vietnam.

The film has an all star cast! It has Mel Gibson, Sam Elliott, Madeleine Stowe, Greg Kinnear, Keri Russell, Chris Klein, and Barry Pepper. Gibson plays Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore, a family man who has served in the Second World War and the Korean War as he prepares a group of young soldiers to fight for the Vietnam War. Elliott plays Sergeant Major Basil Plumley, a longtime combat veteran of the Second World War who is also recruited to fight in the war. Stowe plays Julia Moore, the wife Hal and mother of Hal’s children. Kinnear plays Major Bruce Crandall, a helicopter pilot during the war. And Pepper plays Joseph Galloway, a correspondent of the war and develops a friendship with Moore.

The acting from the cast was simply terrific! When I was a kid, I was starting to know who Mel Gibson was after seeing him in Signs, followed by We Were Soldiers, Lethal Weapon and Braveheart. Even though I was too young to watch them. But my dad was cool with letting me watch them with him. I thought he was really good in this role! He and Bruce Willis was kinda like my generation of action movie stars when my dad’s generation had John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Gibson was incredibly good as commanding officer Hal Moore, giving a performance of a man who believed in what was right; God, country and family. And that goes for Sam Elliott, Greg Kinnear, Chris Klein, and the rest of the actors who played their real-life counterparts!

This is something that rarely gets looked at in war films, but I liked the scenes that got the wives together at the Army base. The first time they were all together was pretty much a realistic portrayal of how these women are about places near by the base for grocery shopping or laundromats. And the one scene that many people find it hard to believe is when the one wife was so oblivious about racism and segregation in the 1960s. I think that was true because there were people who weren’t from the south, or were sheltered in some way from the world. But when they get together about their letters from their husbands or their sons, or to hear the devastating news about them, they all seem like a big family more than just another group. Again, the cast were incredible!

We Were Soldiers was written and directed by Randall Wallace while he produced it with Mel Gibson, Bruce Davey and Stephen McEveety. Wallace came across Moore and Galloway’s novel, We Were Soldiers Once… And Young, when he was reading Moore’s complaint about how Hollywood got it wrong when every film about the Vietnam War was focusing on controversial topics. Which is what my favorites, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, focus on. So Wallace was dedicated to getting the film right, and not a lot of Hollywood directors do that. 

For the battle sequences, they were portrayed as realistically and horrifically violent as the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. Soldiers that are not just shot point blank, but also blown to pieces, running and screaming in pain while on fire or when they’re burnt to a crisp and their skin peeling. The real horrors of war instead of focusing on the political side and the mental capacity of the soldiers at war. Lastly, the Vietnamese army is shown not as unfeeling monsters, but as a professional army defending their beliefs and territory.

We Were Soldiers is a film that talks about the real heroes who were willing to sacrifice their lives and freedom for not just their families, but every human being in America. A seemingly predictable, but very realistic war film that made the late great Lt. Gen. Hal Moore say that Hollywood finally got it right. If you have a family member or a friend who is or has served in the military or fought in harsh combat, please take the time to thank that person for their service.

I’m giving We Were Soldiers 4 stars!