War movies of late have been different from what we have come to expect. They have become a lot more graphic and use documentary style camera work to put is ‘in’ the war. We Were Soldiers adopts this style to tell its story, but unlike say Black Hawk Down, this film employs excellent characterisation to make us care about the officers and grunts faced with the horrors of war.

The first 40 minutes or so of the film concerns itself with the setting up if the various characters and their families. The film devotes time to each of them, adding character and ultimately making the rest of the film all the more powerful. Unlike Black Hawk Down’s faceless grunts we are presented with likeable characters with back stories and when/if they die it affects us.

The keystone to the entire movie is Mel Gibson’s almighty, commanding performance as Hal Moore. Gibson has his share of naysayers, but I just don’t understand them. The man can flit effortlessly from light nonsense like ‘What Women Want’ to gritty hard hitting drama like this film.

Here the character he plays is a well educated man and a master tactician. He treats his men the way he would expect to be treated and it inspires them to go that extra yard for him. Gibson is brilliant here and this is for me amongst his finest performances. Some of his later scenes are very powerful, the pain, the guilt and the torment of all the lives that were lost under his command is evident all over Gibson’s craggy face.

His right hand man is Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, played by Sam Elliot. Elliot was just poured into this uniform, he is utterly convincing as a bad ass army lifer. Plumley served four tours in WW2, one in Korea and now he’s in Nam. Out of all the characters in the film Elliot’s was the one I liked the best. He isn’t given any real depth in the opening scenes, but the quality of Elliot’s performance and the hard ass character he plays meant that I cared what happened to him.

Chris Klein really surprised me here. I’ve been critical of him in past, mostly because he is guilty of playing the same one note character and his acting skills are somewhat questionable. However, here he lets this work to his advantage as his greenness comes through nicely in the character he is portraying.

Madeline Stowe has what is usually the throwaway role in a war film, that of the grieving widow. But, again thanks to some brilliant acting and good writing Stowe’s character rises above it’s normally clichéd station. Wallace also allows her something other to do rather than sit around and cry. She takes it upon herself to add a human face to the yellow telegrams that are delivered to the unfortunate widows on base. It makes for some nice scenes. Whether this actually happened or it was added by Wallace I don’t know, but I appreciated it all the same.

The final acting performance of note is Barry ‘Don’t mention Battlefield Earth’ Pepper as a war photographer. He undergoes the largest transformation of all the characters as he as forced to swap his camera for a weapon and then in an amazing scene back again. He shares a bravado scene with Gibson late on in the film that is incredibly powerful.

Director Randall Wallace has shot a wonderful looking movie here. The battle scenes are grisly and very graphic, but amongst it all are a handful of impressive looking shots. Choppers swooping in and dropping off troops, jets dropping napalm and Vietnamese troopers silhouetted by artillery fire mere centimetres away from US troops. Indeed the film has its share of startling images. Wallace has clearly also learned a lot from Gibson when it comes to shooting large scale battle sequences as the scope of some of the scenes is quite impressive.

When Black Hawk down came out a lot of criticism was levelled at the film in regards to the way it portrayed the Somalian’s. The film showed them as pretty much nothing more than a faceless wave of bodies coming at the US troops. We Were Soldiers on the other hand shows the command centre of the Vietnamese, and takes time establish that they are not evil just the enemy. In some excellent scenes we see the Vietnamese commander setting out his strategy then we switch to Moore who is setting out a counter strategy. It makes for a very intriguing watch to see these two master tacticians trying to second guess each other.

The film also shies away from giving any real political message about the Vietnam War. Rather it concentrates on the loss of life and in the final few scenes we get a feeling of just how huge a loss it was. The film even pays tribute to the men that fell on the Vietnamese side. The film doesn’t paint the war as black and white, but paints shades of grey on each side.