geebs | Valley of Death

I had forgotten that it was the Braveheart team in We Were Soldiers. They even had Scottish sounding music. I kept hoping they would pull a South Park and whenever Mel Gibson was pissed that he'd pull out a huge-ass claymore (the sword, not the mine) and a war horse would appear and he'd start hacking Cong left and right. Well, that and whenever the enemy general was doing a briefing, I kept expecting them to have a scene where blood starts dripping down on him from the roof and then one of his soldiers would fall on him. Or Mel Gibson would suddenly burst in on horseback and crush his head with a flail.

Anyhoo, very cool flick. Definitely more bi-partisan than Black Hawk Down, they don't really villify the Vietnamese. The enemy general isn't some evil bastard. In fact, its almost like a matching of wits between two generals, neither one defined as bad or good. Also, I think if BHD was like SPR, this was somewhat similar to Braveheart. (well, obviously, given it was the same people) And I think you feel more empathy for the people. Not only because they show their wives and their reactions, but they go less for dress accuracy than Blackhawk Down did so you can
recognize all the people.

As for peeps, Sam Elliot's character was a total bad-ass. And for you Greg Kinnear haters, he's totally unhateable. Cool even! I was surprised to see Riley and the secretary from Third Rock. I don't like Felicity's or Madeleine Stowe's hair though. I was thinking Madeleine was less hot here, but mebbe its because of her hair. And I guess she is older. Chris Klein doesn't have as big a part in this movie as the commercial alludes, the sniper guy from SPR is more of a supporting actor. Not surprising, since he and Mel are playing the writers of the book.

But all in all, it was an awesome flick. It even had a Braveheart-ish battle sequence type climax!