After reading various comments, many of which accuse the flick of being a propaganda piece, I had to check it out.
I think it's fantastic. And I'm a DFH, long-haired, radical libertarian who felt, and still feel, that the American actions in Vietnam were a war crime. McNamara shouldn't have been able to retire and write this memoirs; he should have been hung.
The production, writing, directing, acting, editing simply work to tell the tale and show the strain. One commenter was bothered by the splintered, disjointed nature of the production; which feels like it derived directly from the script. I sort of wonder if the reason it didn't bother me was that the mythic payload of the production is so strong that I indulge this disjointedness and see it as a natural reflection of the attitude of mind brought on by that strain. Of course, surviving the experience, psychologically, means that you have to gather those disjointed shards and assemble them into something you can understand when you find a few precious moments to do so. Furthermore, I was often struck by the lucid beauty of these fragments of shimmering humanity; of people clinging, moment by moment to their lives and the promise of solidarity.
I guess I do want to highlight the writing. I'm a sort of fuddy-duddy who believes that the highest of this kind of art must rest on a foundation of beautiful writing; and I felt the script just glowed. On one level, it was a simple matter of creating that kind of hard, sturdy, dangerous realism; the kind of realism that all too often gets jettisoned by producers, in the interest of... what? In the interest, I suppose, of avoiding the danger of telling a real story, hence, not hewing to safe, standard-issue stuff that's guaranteed to fill the seats of theaters. How did it come to pass that the script survived the process and didn't get dumbed down by a script doctor? I think I understand now why the film did lousy at the box office: It's too, too honest.
And, make no mistake, I agree with the "gooks" that the American servicemen under their purview *were* criminals. They were criminals allied under a system that institutionalizes "values" of courage, fidelity, service--and all the rest of it--to the purpose of traveling half-way 'round the world to kill and otherwise terrorize in the interests of western capital. Vietnam was a war crime. And that doesn't detract a whit from the stunning drama we witness in this flick: If anything, I think it enhances it! In fact, if you're one of those who sees those servicemen as selfless servants of "freedom" and "democracy"--and despises what I've written above--watch the flick again with what I've said in mind, and see if the dramatic effect isn't even stronger.
Well, I've gone and done it: I rated it a '10'; very rare for me! I can't emphasize enough what a miracle this production is, again, for its refusal to submit to the usual production process that only serves to trivialize and denigrate the subject matter. I can plainly see why it "failed" as a film "product"... and why it may well be worthy of consideration as a historical document.
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