The Green Berets

Roger Ebert criticized this film for being "heavy handed and old fashioned." Considering the movie's egregious glorification of a widely unpopular war, its simple vilification of the media for speaking out against the conflict, and its deeply racist representations of the Vietnamese people, history, culture, and political context, I'd say it's a fair critique. I also would place this movie on my list of most hated, but mostly because it's loud and sort of uninteresting. Normally I would try to comment more extensively on the film's plot, characters, etc., but I feel much more compelled to comment that my Christmas break was pretty hectic, that I disappointingly left my knitting needles at home, but that happily my step-mom made corn casserole, so things pretty much evened out. George Takei is in this, and the new Star Trek movie is going to be so unspeakably cool. Also, you wouldn't know it from looking at me, but I have really low blood pressure.

In theory I'd like to be interested in The Green Berets. I watched the National Geographic documentary with attention, and expected to do the same here. The most I got out of this, however, was another wow level and a downloaded mp3 of the green berets theme song to set as my brother's ring tone. Since my brother is the only special forces member I know I trust his evaluation of the film: "This movie is to other movies as the Vietnam war was to other wars." He's right, it's long, convoluted, and (judging from my family's experience) popular mostly with patriarchs. [photo: yawn]