“The Green Berets” is considered THE WORST VIETNAM
WAR MOVIE EVER MADE. Let’s see if that
is an exaggeration. The movie was a
project dear to John Wayne’s heart. He
got the idea to make a positive movie about the Vietnam War during a trip to
the Nam to entertain the troops. He was
determined to make a movie that supported American involvement and reflected
his belief in military preparedness.
Wayne was famously conservative and a staunch proponent of “America
right or wrong”. One must be reminded
that at the time that the movie was made (pre-Tet Offensive), most Americans
agreed with Wayne. That does not mean
that the movie was an easy sell. In
fact, only Wayne could have gotten this film made. Once he got Warner Brothers to buck the
Hollywood aversion to making a major Vietnam War movie, he easily got
significant Pentagon cooperation with the production. The military was enamored with the project
and Wayne’s letter to President Johnson was not necessary. The only caveat the Army had was with the
script. The movie was loosely based on
the eponymous novel by Robin Moore. The
military had disavowed the novel because it had a Special Forces unit going
into North Vietnam for a raid. The
Pentagon insisted that the movie keep the raid within South Vietnam. The change was worth it because seldom has a
movie had greater support from the Pentagon.
The movie was filmed at Fort Benning, Georgia. There were plenty of helicopters available,
for instance. The movie spent $150,000
on a village set that was used after by the Army for training. The movie was directed by Wayne, but after
the disappointing performance of his debut “The Alamo”, the studio insisted on
a co-director in Ray Kellogg.
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| "the only good Indian or Commie is a dead one" |
The movie does not claim to be based on a true story,
but it seems to be set in circa 1966.
America is clearly in the “hearts and minds” phase and the Green Berets
are in their early days. The movie
leaves no doubt where it is coming from by leading off with a choral
arrangement of “The Ballad of the Green Berets”. Hippies, leave the theater now! A presser is being held at Fort Bragg to
introduce America to the Green Berets.
Press: why are we fighting? Answer:
the commies are killing all the good people in Vietnam. Press:
why are we involved in a civil war?
Answer: it’s not a civil war, the
commies are on the march. One journalist
in particular is a panty-waisted liberal America-hater. Col. Kirby (Wayne) challenges Beckworth
(David Janssen) to come to Vietnam to see how wrong he is.
Our framing device takes up the challenge and arrives
at a camp the Special Forces are building in the jungle (actually the forest of
Georgia) in the middle of Viet Cong territory.
The camp is named “Dodge City” because “The Alamo” would be too
obvious. Kirby has brought the
obligatory scrounger Peterson (Jim Hutton) who bonds with an orphan named Ham
Chung (which is Vietnamese for Short Round, I guess).
The movie clearly delineates the good guys (candy and medical care) from
the bad guys (punji stakes and boobie traps).
When we torture it’s justified because the suspect killed a good guy and
besides, the VC are ruthless killers who do not deserve legal protections. Beckworth questions this method of
interrogation until a trip to the local Montagnard village finds all the people
killed, tortured, or taken captive. The
corpse of a cute little girl that Beckworth had befriended tips the scale. Before the movie is over, he will be a commie
killing SOB. That’s because the fort is
about to be swamped by Indians. I mean
the camp is about to be assaulted by the VC and North Vietnamese Army.
Now that it’s clear who to cheer and who to boo, the
movie enters its balls to the wall action segments. The night attack on the camp features human
wave attacks and ridiculous deaths. The
funniest moment occurs when a traitorous South Vietnamese soldier opens fire from a
tower, but an ARVN officer blows him up because he had anticipated the
development! The battle culminates with
the arrival of a C-47 “Puff the Magic Dragon” which contrary to its nickname,
does not drop joints on the enemy. Nudge
your girlfriend awake for the ten second demise of every commie in the camp. The movie should have ended here, but we
still have a Special Forces style raid to kidnap a VC general resulting in the
death of a beloved character.
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| was my Peter-san brave? |
If you love mindless action and don’t mind the
heavy-handed propaganda that goes with it, you might find things to like in
this movie. After all, it was hard by
1968 to make a Western with the Indians depicted as evil. Plus how are you going to fit boobie traps,
napalm, and “Spooky” gunships into a cowboy movie? The movie
is basically a Western updated with many of the cool over the top aspects of
twentieth century warfare. So turn off
your brain and try to overlook all the stuff that drove critics catatonic. Granted, they were predisposed to hate the
movie, but you did not have to be a dove to see faults in the movie.
The acting is average with Wayne being rather wooden.
George Takei makes an impression as the
ex-Viet Minh who is now only interested in torturing and killing stinking
communists. (He missed nine episodes of
“Star Trek” including the Tribbles one to make the film.) Janssen and Hutton make the best of stereotypical
roles. (Both actors disagreed with
Wayne’s take on the war, but a pay checks a pay check, right?) Aldo Ray is there to add beef. The studio left Kirby’s wife on the cutting
room floor, but allowed a lame subplot involving a beautiful, vengeful Vietnamese
girl. Otherwise there would have been no
females speaking in the movie. By the
way, the dialogue is not terrible, although the soldiers do not talk like
soldiers.
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| sorry ladies, Aldo Ray keeps his shirt on |
The movie is very simplistic and full of
clichés. The enemy are loathsome, ugly,
and bestial. We are bludgeoned with how
evil they are. Hell, they even kill Ham
Chung’s dog! There is a racist tinge to the depiction of the North Vietnamese as neo-redskins. On the other hand, the
people of South Vietnam are innocent seekers of independence. It goes without saying the movie is pro-Green
Berets. They can do no wrong. They make even torture right. The clichés include the scrounger, the
observing journalist, the child mascot, and the cavalry riding to the rescue. Speaking of which, the movie borrows two
Western scenarios. One is the storming of the camp
by the savages. It adds the war movie
trope of the commando raid to seize an enemy VIP. (“The Dirty Dozen” does it similarly, but
much better the same year.)
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| luckily, Wayne does not fire a shot in the movie |
In conclusion, it would be hard for “The Green
Berets” to be as bad as its reputation.
It is certainly not a good movie.
You have to be an ultra-conservative to nod knowingly while you watch
it. But if you are a Wayne fan, there is
a lot to take comfort in. If you are
just an average war movie lover, you can enjoy the action and laugh at the
ridiculous moments that make it something of a camp classic. It is definitely not the worst Vietnam War movie, but it is probably the worst big budget one.
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| the infamous sun setting in the east scene |
GRADE = D
the trailer
I recommend a book you would find useful, "Vietnam at the Movies," by Michael Lee Lanning, who was an infantry platoon and company commander in Vietnam. Lanning has written numerous military histories, several concerning Vietnam.
ReplyDeleteHe reviews nearly 400 films which concern the Vietnam War in some way. Most are very inaccurate and The Green Berets is far from the worst. Lanning wrote in a footnote on page 50:
"Anyone who ever wrote or reported that uniformed members of the military did not agree with the content of the film or were embarrassed by it, never sat in a post theater at Fort Benning or Fort Bragg or others around the world and heard the wild cheering that accompanied much of the movie-especially the opening scenes."
That being said, I never liked the film, but I'm not a veteran. A friend who was a veteran (late in the war) told me he saw it on a military base and they laughed at its lack of realism but did appreciate what John Wayne was trying to do.
Thanks. All of that makes sense. Now that you mention it, I saw it for the first time on an air base, but I do not remember the audience reaction. No one booed.
DeletePut imdb, nyt, Hollywood and pretty much all media in the context of spitting on soldiers coming home, calling them baby killers, throwing red paint on them, and even protesting outside the gates of receiving stations for our war dead and you have the environment all these reviews were written in. I was there from 66 to 68. TBG is a bit hokey, a bit too clean on the screen compared to real life, but there was NO way you were going to get an objective review from anybody who counted back then. They were ALL pro-communist anti-war. The VC did indeed force villages to support them, take their men forcibly with them, and punish any village who refused them - horribly. Whomever they captured of ours, they rarely took them to Hanoi or to a prison camp. Too much trouble and too far to go. They had fun torturing them and then killed them. VC would "choui hoi" (use surrender leaflets) to enter the ARVN army for the specific purpose of turning their guns on us at the most opportune time, and to deliver information to the VC about our plans and methods. If you will look to see which Vietnam movies DID get good reviews, you will find that ALL of them in some way portrayed the infantryman as dope smoking, brutal, immoral, callous and rebellious hating the war and their officers and wasting civilians. Two years over there, I never saw an instance of that and I got all over the country.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing.
DeleteI LOVE THE FILM! HAPPY 50TH ANNIVERSARY GREEN BERETS!
ReplyDeleteFor over 50 years my buddies and I have laughed at the movie. But, my buds and I were paratroopers and Special Forces (Green Berets) Some even laughed at mistakes in the movie because they were the ones making them. John Wayne made trips to RVN (Republic of Vietnam) to support the troops. Most of the actors that did that were subsequently shunned by Hollywood. Previous comments regarding the crap put out by Hollywood, reviews by those whose livelyhood depends on Hollywood and "news"papers run by anti-war moguls hardly reflected the attitudes of the real Americans that had children or relatives in the military. By the time the movie came out Walter Cronkite had us losing the war. News politicized a victory as a defeat and the movie became a cultural joke. Sometime when you get a chance spend some real time in an SF A camp. Enter a village where the VC have used torture, intimidation and terror to "recruit" fighters. Be friends with the Navy Seabees that traveled all over to build our A camps. Spend some time huddled up close while Puff sprays death all around you so you can live. No that ain't Hollywood. Those things actually happened and although the "wooden" acting was done by a very large man, the actual soldier his character was based on was a small framed man but with very large ones, a chest full of ribbons for valor and service. The events are good, most true but the average movie goer and reviewer are too sold on special effects and props to realize the movie is really about real men, real events and real death. In reality communism was very bad, those fighting it had to do some bad things and now, the children and grandchildren believe "communism lite" (socialist democrats) are the answer to every problem because the college kids of the 60s were not John Wayne but were bad actors and spawned Bad Seeds.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. And thank you for your service.
ReplyDeleteMy dad and his Army buddies had seen this either at base camp or in a small town during R&R when they were in Vietnam.
ReplyDeleteHe had said the soldiers at the time really enjoyed the movie, and in 1968, John Wayne was still as close to a Hollywood God as you can get.
Imagine a Matt Damon action movie being played at military bases now, and you'd have an idea of the popularity JW had in the mid 60s.
That said, the final shot of the sunset IN THE EAST pretty much ruined the movie for my dad and his friends. When obvious geography errors occur it's unforgivable. I digress by I felt the same way when "Fargo" came out. When Buscemi and his friend a coming back from Brainerd, the road they are taking is I-35W NORTHBOUND from Bloomington (presumably from the Mall of America or MSP airport).
Errors like that stick with you.
I don't think people will talk about the "Fargo" error fifty years from now like people still talk about the sun setting in the east.
DeleteI always kind of liked the movie. I remember seeing it as a kid right after it came out. True it is overly propagandistic & it is definitely a "John Wayne Stock, standard fare, same 1940sish character') movie but would a Vietnam movie made during the war, that took an opposite view (leftist) really be much different? I agree with "War Movie Buff", had the movie ended with the retaking of the A Camp it would have been much better. The campy 007esque raid to kidnap an NVA General is what made the film less than stellar for me. There's no doubt the underlying tone of the cruelty of the communist in Vietnam, both at the time the film was made & post 1975 Indochina was quite right, the problem was that the message was so overt in the movie, & no way were critics at that politically high octane charged time gunna let Wayne get away with that! And at least you got to give Wayne, credit, he had the balls to make it!
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point on the movie focusing on atrocities by the communists. They were treated like Indians in the pre-1960's Westerns.
DeleteOur Special Forces medical class had graduated, earned our Green Berets and were waiting on our orders to go to Vietnam. We were looking forward to seeing the film as it premiered at Ft. Bragg, N.C. We were all "gung ho" but very disappointed in the film as it was made more in the WWII genre with John Wayne. We were ready for the intensity of the "Platoon" film but society was not. After all these years, it is my understanding a lot of declassified missions of the MACV-SOG (Studies & Observation Group) SF teams who went into Laos & Cambodia have peaked Hollywood's interest. They had 100% casualties. There are about 50 Green Berets "MIA" in those two countries. Lost a medic classmate on one of those MACV-SOG mission.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the input. I would describe the movie as more of a Western than a WWII movie.
DeleteJohn Wayne, throughout his career, made movies that lunch bucket Joes could understand. America always stood for the good and the pure, and her enemies were always the lowest of guttural rascals. Reality, of course, is much more complex than that. But hey, the man gave his fans what they wanted to see!!
ReplyDeleteAgree.
ReplyDeleteThey cut out the wet t shirt scene in the bar.
ReplyDelete