Hamburger Hill

Platoon begins as an excellent, experiential war film, but then the simple -minded good guy / bad guy plot is introduced and before you know it you have Willem Dafoe as the Messiah. Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now are both classics, but they are really show pieces for their directors. (Stanley Kubrick even neglected to film the vital final part of the novel The Short -Timers.) Hamburger Hill succeeds through raw verisimilitude. It doesn't try to be stylish. It doesn't make any Big Statements and it doesn't need to. You can draw all the conclusions you need to on your own.

Vietnam war movies have a tendency to start debating the necessity of war (or futility of it). Full Metal Jacket is merely brainwashed patriotism that Kubrick intended (I guess) to make his dehumanizing statement. Platoon remains the most preachy of the lot, always bringing in morals and spirituality into the mix. Enter "Hamburger Hill", an introspective look into the lifestyle of the soldier in Vietnam without trying to sell us a message. What you get out of it is not what they tell you, but rather what you interpret on your own. The battle itself is one of the most gruelling experiences ever put on celluloid. My kudos to John Irvin for pulling it off so effectively and warping our emotions as he proceeds. My biggest guff with this movie rests in the fact that it takes more than halfway through for them to actually GET to Hamburger Hill. After that, it's definitely worth a look. Overall: 3 out of 5 stars.