Hamburger Hill

The meat grinder effect.

Unfairly forgotten and left in the slipstream of critical darlings Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill can proudly fly its own worthwhile flag. There's nothing preachy or political here, director John Irvin and writer James Carabatsos approach the subject with a refreshing humane honesty, making us viewers privy to the American soldiers mindset as they cope with life in Vietnam before an assault on some turd pile strategic hill, a battle that the survivors of that particular bloody conflict would call Hamburger Hill.

No matter what one feels about the war, the politics of such etc, the fact that quite often Vietnam films zoom in on the misdemeanours and egotistical sides of the American presence in V...

Courtney B. Vance was kind of all over the place in this wasn't he? One moment he's an over-the-top make everything political racist, and the next moment he actually cares about everyone... and then it's back to nothing but race... and then he cares about people. He really needed to pick a direction and roll with it, because he came across as going too places at once.

But otherwise this is the forgotten cousin of Platoon. It's not exactly as good as Platoon, but it is more solid start-to-finish than Full Metal Jacket was.

The strength really comes from an attempt to depict the events without really making anything heroic, or action-hero dramatic. And, instead, they do their best to make it just a straight war movie. No great odyssey, ...