Caseus Archivelox: We Were Soldiers

2002-02-24 - 3:01 p.m.
When I got to the theater around 6:05, there were already a lot of people in line for "We Were Soldiers". It was the typical sneak preview Freewater people running around with our heads cut off trying to figure everything out. That was compounded by the fact that the basketball team's managers didn't show up early enough to get good seats. But it worked out fine, as they got seats. I got to rip Coach K's ticket, and I think [girlfriend] still has his stub. We almost completely filled up Griffith, which is nice, because it only took an extra half an hour before we got started.
The movie itself was fairly good. Nothing incredibly new, but it wasn't as bad as "The Patriot" or most other recent war movies. It was an interesting take on early Vietnam, with not as much crappy John Wayne style heroics (like in "The Green Berets") and more about the fighting in Vietnam rather than emotional head games (like in "The Deerhunter", "Apocalypse Now", "Full Metal Jacket", and "Platoon"). Sam Elliott was good as the cranky Sgt. Major, although his (and most other) dialogue in the movie was mixed way too low. The sound effects and music were loud enough. [Girlfriend] was made really uncomfortable by the violence (and especially by the scene where the reporter (Barry Pepper, making up somewhat for his performance in "Battlefield Earth") tries to pick up the wounded mortar guy, but ends up ripping the charred flesh from his legs, which I found disturbing as well). The movie was sort of full of Randy Wallace pounding some things into the audience's heads. But the battle scenes were well done.
After hanging around to hear Randy defend the movie fairly well, and also "The Man in the Iron Mask", which I probably should rewatch at some point, and again ramming my thigh into the armrests in Griffith (in front of one of the co-producers of the film, who nicely asked if I was ok), and also walking by Marc "Riley" Blucas, but not being willing to talk to him (because I hate Riley), [girlfriend] and I went off to the Purim party.