Hey folks, Harry here with Christina's take on the Mel Gibson starring Randall Wallace directed flick... WE WERE SOLDIERS. Now we've had one thrilled and one slightly chilled review... Here we gather another rave... and from a female viewer to boot. So this film seems to be working pretty well... Hopefully ratings and the 'new Hollywood' won't endeavor to change it too much.... As there doesn't seem much more than a bit of trimming here and there to be done. Here ya go...
I was also at the screening for We Were Soldiers at the Janss Marketplace in Thousand Oaks, CA. After reading the reviews on the site, I thought that I may as well chime in myself.
I live right down the street from the theater so just about every week I get passes to screenings. I usually end up just getting crappy teen flicks so when I got this pass saying it was a war film starring Mel Gibson and Sam Elliot I jumped on it immediatly. It was the first screening I went into feeling excited about the movie and the first movie I've test screened that would be considered a 'Blockbuster.'
Overall I liked this film very much. It is extremely graphic. I would say possibly even more so than Saving Private Ryan if not equal to it. As for the actors, I thought Sam Elliot and Mel Gibson were perfectly cast. Sam has the lines in the movie that got the most laughs.(and laughs in this film are few and far between because of it's intensity.)
Then there is Chris Klein, Barry Pepper and Greg Kinnear. Yeah, Chris Klein is a bit of a pretty boy, but I think he did a pretty good job. While Barry Pepper was good, I think someone else may have been better suited for the part than him. Greg Kinnear could have been better. When I think 'war movie' I don't think Greg Kinnear. :)
For all the Buffy fans out there, Marc Blucas has a role in this movie. I was like 'holy shit thats Riley.' Unfortunatly his charector in the movie is about as interesting as Riley himself. :) Thats not totally his fault though as he doesn't have a lot of material to work with. Continuing with the WB trend, Kerri Russell plays Chris Klein's wife in the movie and I think she did a really good job.
More than half of the movie is comprised of war scenes. The rest of the movie is dedicated to showing the stars with their families before the battle starts and then showing the wives bonding together while their husbands are gone and getting the news of their husbands deaths throughout the film. Those scenes are really the only ones that I had a problem with in the movie. They are just a bit to sacharine and melodramatic for me.
I was suprised to find out that the movie isn't being released until next summer. You could tell that some of the music was temparary. But as far as the effects go, they looked really well done and for the most part completed from what I could tell. There were a few scenes that obviously had something temparary placed there until the effect for it was completed but for a film that isn't being released for a long while, it looked and sounded very good.
Right now the cut of the film runs roughly 2 hours and 45 minutes and I expect that they will cut some of the non war scenes. But really, the cut that they have right now is a great start. Just could use a little tightening up here and there.
At the end of the film I gave the movie an 'excellent' rating on my sheet, as did the person that I came with. It was interesting to note that on the sheet one of the questions was 'Do you think that the events of Sept. 11th made you rank this movie higher than you normally would have?' My answer was yes. Even without what is going on in the world right now, it was a very good movie. But there are a lot of patriotic moments and themes throughout the film and I think they had a bigger impact on me because of the events of Sept. 11th than they would have under normal circumstances.
~Christina
