The Green Berets (1968, Ray Kellogg & John Wayne)

"Out here, due process is a bullet!"

The Vietnam war, spanning from 1965 to 1975, was one of America's most controversial wars, not to mention biggest mistakes in American war history (and that's saying a lot). From this disgraceful war, rose some of the greatest war films in film history such as The Deer Hunter, Platoon (which was actually written partially as a reaction to this film), Full Metal Jacket and my personal favourite Apocalypse Now. All of these of course being anti-war films considering the subject matter. In-fact just about every single Vietnam war film is an anti-war film... except for the first.

Well, in 1968 the first Vietnam (pro) war film The Green Berets... this heavy-handed, incredibly old-fashioned, anti-communist piece of garbage crapfest of a film was released to an already angered public. Yeah... I didn't like it.

At the time of it's release, the public had already shown it's disgust for the war and had it's far share of anti-war protests, including young men who fled to Canada or cut off their index (trigger) fingers in-order to dodge the then compulsory war draft. The public had even bore witness to the horrific footage from the war that was being shown on television at the time, so people were expecting something like Hearts and Minds (which took another 6 years).

Instead they received a film full of insanely cliched characters (not to mention the dialogue), including Jim Hutton playing what looks like an Elvis Presley like character (maybe they couldn't afford Elvis), the 'not convinced yet journalist' and endless others. It over simplifies the image of the Vietnam war as we all know this was no ordinary warfare, and what's worse, nothing is explained in this film about the war itself, it could be any war. Instead it comes off as an incredibly patronising 'cowboys and indians' style film with non other than John Wayne in the title role, which by the way was his idea to make the film. Whilst we're on casting, why is it also that most of the green berets in this film are shamefully portrayed as middle aged men? The fact is most men who were drafted to Vietnam were between the ages of 18 and 25. On a personal note, I was also very sad to see Aldo Ray (who I'm a fan of) and George Takei (aka Mr Sulu) in this film.

On a film perspective, the Green Berets was released the same year as the space operatic masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was a giant leap into the future of cinema. This film however took cinema back another 15 years into the early 1950s where everything is black and white and there is no in-between. But people in 1968 were no longer that naive or ill-informed and it was rightly panned by critics upon it's release. For instance, the great Roger Ebert gave it zero stars and called it "offensive" and even went on to place it on his "Most Hated" list.

This film is basically nothing more than a right-wing propaganda film blindly glorifying the green berets, stating that Americans should not question their government and just go where they are asked to go, you know like an idiotic American fighting robot. This is probably the worst war film I have ever sat through, and yes I have seen Pearl Harbor.

Click here for the trailer

Rating: F