FINALLY: A Rumor of War (1980)

          You would think that after a decade of doing this blog and watching over 800 war movies, there would be no war movies I still wanted to see.  But there are still a few great white whales out there.  One of them is “Ice Cold in Alex”.  But I got to check one off my list recently when I found “A Rumor of War” on YouTube.  I had the movie on VHS when it first came out and showed it to my American History classes a couple of times, but the tape got ruined and unbelievably it is still not available on DVD!  It is based on the memoir by Philip Caputo which was one the first significant books that came out of the war.  It was published in 1978.  Caputo went on to acclaim as a war correspondent (he reported from Saigon as it fell) and as an author.  “Rumor” is considered one of the classics books about Vietnam.  It was one of the first books I read about the war and still one of the best.  The miniseries took on a big task in adapting the book and had the added pressure of bringing the war to a TV audience for the first time.

                        It begins with a flashforward to Lt. Caputo on trial for the murders of two South Vietnamese civilians. The movie is basically divided into four parts.   In 1963, Caputo (Brad Davis) is a typical high schooler who can’t wait to leave home, although he has a cushy middle-class life.  He has problems with this father of the “I’m not a kid” variety and rebels against his parent’s plans for him to get “a respectable job, a respectable home, and a respectable wife”.  He stands in for his generation and just like many young men of that generation, he is seduced by Kennedy’s “ask what you can do for your country” challenge.  The Marines seemed a good way to avoid suburban hell and prove his manhood.  The second part begins with boot camp where the “lesson of the day is kill!”  As far as tactics are concerned, “ambush is killing and killing is fun!”  The idea that war is about killing will figure in the war crime he is eventually charged with.  His unit is sent to a place called Danang, South Vietnam.  They have to look it up on a map, as did all Americans.  His unit was the first one involved in what they called “a splendid little war” because it was going to be short and easy.  Make that frustrating and grungy.  They soon find out that their main enemies are the heat and dysentery.  The Viet Cong make their presence known through sniping and mines.  They are assigned to guard an airfield and that’s it, supposedly.  No one could have predicted the escalation on the horizon.  Although Lt. Caputo is technically in charge of the platoon and he is competent, it is actually run by a gruff Korean War veteran, Sgt. Coleman (Brian Dennehy).  They go on search and destroy missions where they are told to only shoot if the suspect is running away.  They do a lot of humping through the boonies and occasionally search villes.  It gets frustrating because there is no chance to fight classic battles like Gettysburg.  The third part begins with Caputo being transferred to a staff position at headquarters. He is in charge of the body count (“officer of the dead” as he calls it).  As a REMF, he learns that the brass is largely clueless about the tip of the spear and most are fixated on statistics and trivial pursuits like volleyball games.  He has a conversation with a chaplain (“sky pilot”) who questions the war.  “I hope none of these boys are getting killed because someone wants a promotion”.  Caputo is not anti-war, yet.  He wants back into combat and gets his wish in part four.  The innocent early days are over and the rules of engagement are being disregarded, especially when you lose men to booby traps.  Pair the frustration of losing men with the boot camp mantra of kill and you get the war crime Caputo gets accused of.

                        “A Rumor of War” is a good substitute for reading the book. Although one man’s story, the book is one of the most informative about grunts in the early years of the war.  Caputo was an idealist who became a cynic, much like the American public.  It took the public a lot longer because it was not there.  Caputo goes from green lieutenant to war criminal in one tour and it seems unrealistic, but the movie tracks the book fairly well.  He reminds me of Elias from “Platoon” if Elias had killed the villager.  The military justice part of the movie reminds of “Breaker Morant”.  It is essentially a movie about how a good man can do something bad due to the environment he is placed in.

                        The strength of the movie is it brings the book to the small screen with little enhancement.  Since it was a mini-series clocking in at 191 minutes, it is able to cover the book well.  The cast is made-for-TV, but not bad.  Brad Davis was two years from “Midnight Express” and was a good get for the movie.  He does a great job with Caputo’s transition from idealist to cynic.  Since this is the early war, you can forgive Caputo for being very naïve about war.  Dennehy is strong as a stereotypical sergeant and the dynamic between him and Caputo is true to the war.  Keith Carradine and Michael O’Keefe are solid as Caputo’s friends.  Look for a very young Laurence Fishburne (one year after “Apocalypse Now”).  Unfortunately, the cast was not put through any kind of boot camp so their movements look like actors playing army men.  The movie is good about showing some of the hardships of the war, but due to it being on TV, it has to pull its punches.  Still, you get a clear idea why Caputo becomes frustrated.

                        If you have seen a lot of Vietnam War movies, “A Rumor of War” stands out as an oddball.  It was made for TV.  It is a true story.  But most odd is it is not trying to be cathartic.  There is little combat and what there is is far from graphic and adrenaline-pumping.  His crime is not Nazi-worthy and the trial is hardly edge of your seat.  It’s the “Red Badge of Courage” of the Vietnam War.  Watch it after “The Quiet American” and “Go Tell the Spartans” and you will have a good idea of how we got to “Hamburger Hill”.

GRADE =  B

COMPARISON TO THE BOOK:    *** Spoiler alert:  This comparison will give away plot points.

                        The reason why I gave the movie a B is because it is so close to the movie, but there are some differences.  Caputo actually joined the Marines three years before the Kennedy assassination.  He wanted adventure and to prove himself.  There was no girlfriend involved.  He went beyond boot camp and graduated from Officers Candidate School.  The chronology of events in Vietnam is basically the same. Most of the incidents in the movie occurred to Caputo.  Coleman is based on a Sgt. Campbell and he does not die.  There is no McCoy in the book.  The role was apparently created for Keith Carradine and so Caputo’s character could be in the middle between the humane Cohen (Levy in the book) and the warrior McCoy.  The stint at headquarters is accurate, with the superior’s names being changed.  They may have been fictional, but they represented archetypes.  In the book, he mentions that he had more in common with the VC than with the rear echelon.  The movie gets a lot of the details about Vietnam right, but leaves out a lot.  It refers to the heat and dysentery, but not the mosquitoes and exhaustion.  The movie omits the enemy atrocities mentioned in the book.  The war crime is essentially the same, but Caputo was not on the mission.  He ordered it and what happened was due to his instructions to the patrol, so for the movie to place him on the mission was acceptable.  Why did he do it?  The movie does not do a good job on his motivation.  It is hard to match the book’s explanation.  Things rot in the Vietnamese climate, including ethics.

                        The book is better than the movie.  Caputo is a talented writer and the book reads like a novel.  I am not a big memoir fan, but I love this book.  He has a way of describing things that a movie cannot replicate.  He describes the “barbed wire spreading steel thorns through the late-summer rice.”  There are so many memorable lines in it.  Here are a few:

    

                        -  “The guerrillas were everywhere, which is another way of saying they were nowhere.”

                        -   “In war, a man does not have to be killed or wounded to be a casualty.”

                        -  “The one true god of modern war is blind chance.”