The concept of a movie about a Gay relationship during the Vietnam war could have been quite interesting - however, this doesn't really deliver anything all that well.
Given the Vietnam war is probably the most film documented war in modern history, then the gamble to film it in a temperate leafy woodland did not give the impression this was taking part in the jungles of Vietnam (and lets also skip over the small brick built buildings). It is clearly low budget & it shows.
That could be forgiven if the narrative had been strong & compelling, but sadly the dialogue was cliched and delivered by the actors like they'd just read it 5 minutes before the camera rolled. Sadly everything about this movie was as cliched as it could get. For a film that is two hours long there was so little development of the characters they just came across as one dimensional caricatures. Because of that I felt no connection to them whatsoever. The primary characters were little more than a check-list of types from the psychotic captain to the homophobic Italian.
The gay pairing came across as little more than best buddies, but we knew they were gay because everyone else in the film kept telling us they were - oh, and the snogged a little bit. Of course, with a film like this the inevitable was always gonna happen, one of them gets fatally wounded but his buddy, sorry lover slings him over his shoulder and runs through the enemy fire only for him to die on the helicopter.
At times I struggled to keep up with the war narrative itself, it didn't flow as easily as it needed to & at times I found myself wondering what was actually happening.
I didn't hate it but it didn't feel like an original idea (at least in the depiction of the war stuff) with every well worn cliche that hindsight has come to make us realise about the Vietnam war being thrown in - sorry, but I cringed at the Gay moral hero scene. That was a modern mindset stitched into a 60's character.
To give it some credit, at times the cinematography was good - I especially liked the way the last scene was shot as he scattered his lover's ashes onto the paddy field.
Given the Vietnam war is probably the most film documented war in modern history, then the gamble to film it in a temperate leafy woodland did not give the impression this was taking part in the jungles of Vietnam (and lets also skip over the small brick built buildings). It is clearly low budget & it shows.
That could be forgiven if the narrative had been strong & compelling, but sadly the dialogue was cliched and delivered by the actors like they'd just read it 5 minutes before the camera rolled. Sadly everything about this movie was as cliched as it could get. For a film that is two hours long there was so little development of the characters they just came across as one dimensional caricatures. Because of that I felt no connection to them whatsoever. The primary characters were little more than a check-list of types from the psychotic captain to the homophobic Italian.
The gay pairing came across as little more than best buddies, but we knew they were gay because everyone else in the film kept telling us they were - oh, and the snogged a little bit. Of course, with a film like this the inevitable was always gonna happen, one of them gets fatally wounded but his buddy, sorry lover slings him over his shoulder and runs through the enemy fire only for him to die on the helicopter.
At times I struggled to keep up with the war narrative itself, it didn't flow as easily as it needed to & at times I found myself wondering what was actually happening.
I didn't hate it but it didn't feel like an original idea (at least in the depiction of the war stuff) with every well worn cliche that hindsight has come to make us realise about the Vietnam war being thrown in - sorry, but I cringed at the Gay moral hero scene. That was a modern mindset stitched into a 60's character.
To give it some credit, at times the cinematography was good - I especially liked the way the last scene was shot as he scattered his lover's ashes onto the paddy field.