I didn’t have the highest hopes for Randall Wallace’s (or effectively Mel Gibson’s) We Were Soldiers but it sadly couldn’t even reach those. The story just isn’t enticing to me and I say that as a big fan of war movies and a fan of Mel Gibson, where Braveheart and Hacksaw Ridge managed to set up interesting storylines and characters to follow I didn’t care for a single character here and the storytelling was chaotic and without any real direction. There are some good ideas in the story despite the hoo-rah lens we’re seeing it through, there’s a definite attempt (and success in some ways) to grab at anti-war themes through the sheer violence and the attempt to showing both sides of the conflict, sadly for the both sides thing it ended up just taking away from the movie by giving a surface-level look into each which simply doesn’t work for subject matter this dark and powerful. The acting also isn’t too bad, Mel’s his typical self which works here and the supporting cast has impressive names like Sam Elliott, Jon Hamm, Greg Kinnear, Chris Klein, and Madeleine Stowe, yet out of them all I’d say my favorite performance here was Barry Pepper who’s yet to disappoint me through the few times I’ve seen him. Where it earns its flowers and what keeps it from a lower rating is the technical experience, the sound design is truly phenomenal and the cinematography, editing, and score were very well done throughout, I came in expecting to rely on that part of this for a good part of my enjoyment and I was happy to see it deliver. I see why it’s so loved and I see why it’s so hated and like most movies in the love or hate category I find myself in the middle, there’s not much to the story but the filmmaking is really well done and I had a pretty good time overall.
I didn’t have the highest hopes for Randall Wallace’s (or effectively Mel Gibson’s) We Were Soldiers but it sadly couldn’t even reach those. The story just isn’t enticing to me and I say that as a big fan of war movies and a fan of Mel Gibson, where Braveheart and Hacksaw Ridge managed to set up interesting storylines and characters to follow I didn’t care for a single character here and the storytelling was chaotic and without any real direction. There are some good ideas in the story despite the hoo-rah lens we’re seeing it through, there’s a definite attempt (and success in some ways) to grab at anti-war themes through the sheer violence and the attempt to showing both sides of the conflict, sadly for the both sides thing it ended up just taking away from the movie by giving a surface-level look into each which simply doesn’t work for subject matter this dark and powerful. The acting also isn’t too bad, Mel’s his typical self which works here and the supporting cast has impressive names like Sam Elliott, Jon Hamm, Greg Kinnear, Chris Klein, and Madeleine Stowe, yet out of them all I’d say my favorite performance here was Barry Pepper who’s yet to disappoint me through the few times I’ve seen him. Where it earns its flowers and what keeps it from a lower rating is the technical experience, the sound design is truly phenomenal and the cinematography, editing, and score were very well done throughout, I came in expecting to rely on that part of this for a good part of my enjoyment and I was happy to see it deliver. I see why it’s so loved and I see why it’s so hated and like most movies in the love or hate category I find myself in the middle, there’s not much to the story but the filmmaking is really well done and I had a pretty good time overall.
