\We Were Soldiers"" should be a match made in heaven. America craves patriotic war movies, and Mel Gibson is the master of patriotic war heroes. Unfortunately, what could have been a very good movie is ruined by clich??s, excessive violence, one-liners and predictability. A couple of strong performances and its impressive scenery are outweighed by the movie's use of every cheap trick in the book, leaving it thoroughly mediocre.
The movie is based on the book ""We Were Soldiers and Young"" by Hal Moore (Mel Gibson) and Joseph Galloway (Barry Pepper), the true story of the first bloody American battle in Vietnam. The movie follows Moore, a brave, compassionate family man and weathered veteran from the stateside training facility straight through his whole experience in Vietnam, most of which is shown in combat, where his troops were outnumbered five fold by the enemy.
The movie's greatest weaknesses stem from its utter lack of subtlety. The visual effects, like the explosions and gore familiar to director Randall Wallace's previous work'Wallace wrote both ""Pearl Harbor"" and ""Braveheart""'are stunning, but repeated so many times that they lose all meaning. One-liners and clich??s are sprinkled throughout the dialogue to the point where it makes it difficult to take the movie seriously, like the two consecutive dying soldiers who declare their love for their country and their wife, respectively, just before dying.
Many characters are clich??d too, like the fresh-faced young officer and new father played by Chris Klein. The most shameful display is that of Moore's family. His children, in their few scenes, make the Osmonds look rough around the edges.
