The Green Berets (1968)
Directed by John Wayne
Col. Mike Kirby picks two teams of crack Green Berets for two missions in South Vietnam. The first is to strengthen a camp that is trying to be taken by the enemy. The second is to kidnap a North Vietnamese General.
6 connections found
View:
6 connections, in both directions
What critics compared The Green Berets to
But in the end, the John Wayne film that 12 Strong most reminds one of is not Back to Bataan or Fort Apache or The Alamo, but The Green Berets, not for its filmmaking qualities — Danish commercials whiz Nicolai Fuglsig, directing his first feature, and fellow countryman cinematographer Rasmus Videbaek do a capable and vigorous job getting the action convincingly on the screen — but for its simplistic, one-dimensional politics and lack of of historical perspective.
Hemsworth plays the straightest action himbo since John Wayne in 1968’s The Green Berets (that dim-witted propaganda was to the Vietnam War what 12 Strong is to…
Worse, it actually invites comparison with Wayne’s reprehensible, shameless Vietnam recruiting film The Green Berets, which he starred in and co-directed with veteran second unit director Ray Kellog and an unbilled Mervyn LeRoy.
A few scenes, a few sentiments and the tone seem inspired by the John Wayne flag-waver “The Green Berets,” an another war film about another battle in another war (Vietnam), but also one where victory is spun out of something that looked nothing like victory at the time.
The troubling thing about criticism like this is not the identification of films that actually do glorify what they represent (e.g., The Green Berets ), but that it misidentifies those that don't ( Lone Survivor ).
A rousing tale of Pacific War heroism that has more in common with jingoistic Wayne staples such as Sands of Iwo Jima or The Green Berets than anything in the 21st century, this is wearily formulaic film-making that has nonetheless charmed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences into doling out six Oscar nominations, including some arguably untenable best director and best picture nods.
But I was thinking less of the Alamo than The Alamo, John Wayne’s bloated, simplistic 1960 directorial debut – or better yet, his notorious 1968 Vietnam epic The Green Berets, whose sensitive handling of a divisive conflict is just about in line with Bay’s.
It plays like “The Green Berets” or “Hamburger Hill,” or any of the wave of Reagan Era “This time we WIN” Vietnam pictures.
In trying to make his Black Hawk Down, Michael Bay has inadvertently made his own The Green Berets—as envisioned by Donald Trump.
Advertisement
Cinematically, it’s “Zulu” or “The Green Berets,” with a heavy dose of the Afghan War documentary “Restrepo” for realism.
The Deer Hunter was the first of a number of Hollywood films that eschewed the flag-waving patriotism seen in the 1968 John Wayne picture The Green Berets and instead depicted the conflict as a brutal and bloody failure.