We Were Soldiers Review (2002)
Director: Randall Wallace
Writer: Randall Wallace (based on the book We Were Soldiers Once… and Young by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway)
Starring: Mel Gibson, Madeleine Stowe, Greg Kinnear, Sam Elliott, Chris Klein, Keri Russell, Barry Pepper
Release Date: March 1, 2002

As I’ve said before, Mel Gibson is my favorite actor of all time. Has been for as long as I can remember, even back in the mid-90s when I like eight or ten, Mel Gibson was my favorite. Braveheart is my favorite film of all time. And somewhere in the conversation for the best things he’s ever done, right there alongside William Wallace and Martin Riggs and Benjamin Martin, is Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore. We Were Soldiers is one of my favorite films not just in his filmography but in any filmography. Easily top ten all time. If you’ve never seen it, you’re about to understand why I feel that way.

The film is based on the book We Were Soldiers Once… and Young, written by Moore himself and journalist Joseph Galloway, who was there. It covers the Battle of Ia Drang Valley in November 1965, the first major engagement between U.S. Army forces and the North Vietnamese Army. Moore commanded the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment into Landing Zone X-Ray, a clearing surrounded by thousands of NVA soldiers in the Ia Drang Valley, an area the Vietnamese called the Valley of Death. His battalion was outnumbered, cut off, and fighting for their lives for three days. The battle was tactically considered an American victory. The cost was high.

Director Randall Wallace is an interesting figure in Hollywood because his resume doesn’t look like anyone else’s. He wrote Braveheart, again my favorite film of all time, which already earns him a permanent spot in my good graces. But, he also wrote the story for Titan Quest, the action RPG that the first half of this site’s name comes from and also one of my favorite games of all time. The man is responsible, in part, for both Braveheart and Titan Quest, which means his taste in entertainment lines up almost perfectly with mine. He brings the same instinct for combining epic scale with intimate emotional truth that made Braveheart so powerful, and We Were Soldiers is further evidence that when Wallace is telling a story about men in impossible circumstances, he consistently delivers something worth watching.

We Were Soldiers isn’t just a battlefield movie. It’s a film about what soldiers carry with them into combat and what they leave behind, and Wallace frames both sides of that equation with equal care. The scenes in the Ia Drang Valley are intense and brutal and photographically stunning. The scenes back at Fort Benning, where the wives are receiving the telegrams as their husbands are dying, are devastating in a completely different way. The two threads work together rather than competing, and the effect is cumulative.

Mel Gibson as Hal Moore is one of the great understated performances of his career. Moore isn’t a loud character. He doesn’t grandstand. He leads by example and by presence, and Gibson projects a quiet authority that makes you understand immediately why men would follow him into an impossibly bad situation without question. There’s a moment early in the film where Moore gathers his men before deployment and promises them he will be the first one off the helicopter and the last one back on, and that he will leave no man behind dead or alive. Gibson delivers that promise with such stillness and conviction that you believe it completely. And then the film shows you him keeping it.

Sam Elliott as Sergeant Major Basil Plumley is worth a paragraph all by himself. Elliott brings his trademark laconic authority to a man who has seen so much combat he’s moved past fear entirely into a kind of permanent professional readiness. There’s a scene where Plumley is standing in the middle of a firefight doing nothing while bullets fly everywhere around him, and someone asks what he’s doing. His answer is one of the best lines in any war film, and Elliott delivers it without blinking. Every scene Elliott is in he owns completely, and his chemistry with Gibson is the kind of thing you can’t manufacture.

Greg Kinnear as Major Bruce Crandall, the Huey pilot who kept flying resupply missions into the hot landing zone long after his obligation ended, brings a different kind of courage to the film. Barry Pepper as Joe Galloway, the journalist who landed in the middle of the fight and picked up a rifle because there was no other option, gives the film its journalistic credibility and its emotional through-line. Pepper has appeared in multiple films in this Memorial Day series and he belongs in every one of them. Chris Klein handles a difficult role well as 2nd Lieutenant Jack Geoghegan, a young officer in his first engagement whose arc in the film carries real weight.

What separates We Were Soldiers from other Vietnam films is the respect it has for the men fighting on both sides. Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An, the NVA commander on the other side of the valley, is shown as a real military mind making real tactical decisions, not as an abstraction or a villain. The film never loses sight of the fact that both sides in the Ia Drang Valley had men with families and reasons to fight and reasons to come home, and that not all of them did. That dual perspective gives the film a moral weight that goes beyond patriotism or propaganda.

The real Hal Moore was shown the film before its release and publicly approved of it, calling it the most accurate Vietnam film he’d ever seen. That endorsement from the man who was actually there means more than any critical review. The men of the 7th Cavalry are honored in this film the way they deserve to be. But Moore means something a little more personal in my area than just a historical figure in a movie. He lived in Auburn, Alabama, in Lee County which is the same county I call home. I never met him, but around here you didn’t need to meet Hal Moore to know who he was. Any time Vietnam came up in a classroom, his name came up with it.

His book was local legend before it was a major motion picture. When the film was announced people in this area were genuinely excited in a way that went beyond just anticipation for a war movie. This was their neighbor’s story and community member finally getting the treatment it deserved. Moore passed away in 2017 and it was a big deal down here. For what it’s worth, I’m generally not a fan of renaming forts and towns that were named after Confederate soldiers, but when they renamed Fort Benning to Fort Moore I didn’t have much of a complaint. The man was local, he earned it, and everyone around here still called it Fort Benning anyway and they eventually renamed it back to Fort Benning.

We Were Soldiers is a masterpiece. It’s the film I reach for when I want to remember why war movies matter, what they can do when they’re done right, and what the men who actually fought in these battles deserve from the people who make films about them. Mel Gibson has given me a lot of great performances over the years. This one, alongside Braveheart, sits at the very top.

We Were Soldiers is a definite must-have in your Blu-ray collection, and you can pick it up for under $20 on Amazon right now.

We Were Soldiers gets a five out of five: EXALTED.

We Were Soldiers is number three on my Top 10 Movies Worth Watching This Memorial Day list. It’s also the last new review of the series. For more Vietnam action, check out my review of Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, both entries on the aforementioned list. You should also check out reviews of #2 Black Hawk Down and #1 Saving Private Ryan.

* This review contains Amazon affiliate links. Using them helps to support the site.

Be sure to let me know what you think of We Were Soldiers in the comments below, and if you liked the review, consider hitting the like button.