Geoff Goss

Good film. Gives a sense of a slow burning anger at injustice .

I can’t understand why anyone would bother to make this film It’s one of the most miserable and reactionary movies I’ve seen in a long while.

Some great scenes in this film. And the film is well made But it is so racist in its portrayal of the Vietnamese, that it is hard to really give it the thumbs up.

Well there’s been so much praise of this film by the arty world and the soft left, that it’s timely to step back a little and reflect. I liked some of it and other parts were tedious. I liked the unexpected meandering tale, but got bored with the 5 characters who were not sufficiently different for the tension to really come through. And when one of them gets blown up, he is forgotten within seconds- so much for the brotherly bonds. The gold theme does not work well- it may even let the whole story down. However, the film tackles, perhaps for the first time form USA, the perspective of the Vietnamese. And that’s a breath of fresh air — that they are neither poor victims or evil goblins. But the problem is that the film twists that theme to make the black soldiers into victims and heroes. It even says there were atrocities on both sides. Well frankly - did the Vietnamese walk into American villages and massacre all the children (black and white American soldiers did that to the Vietnamese). Did the Vietnamese drop chemical weapons on children and civilians? The real hero’s were not the black soldiers - they were the Vietnamese peasant armies that took on and defeated a brutal superpower invader.

Good film! It brings a tense political and violent episode of Egypt’s recent history to our living rooms. And it is reasonable-in the sense that it is reasonably nuanced. There’s a point when you just want to get the hell out of that goddam van!!

It is strange that this movie is so hyped up- I wonder is that because it is an all-black cast and has a gay theme? Because really it is a shallow flat film and relies on one-dimensional stereo-types. There is no tension. Rather a collection of scenes that are played out at a slow tiresome pace.