If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Better than most people think

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

U.S. Special Forces troops train in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Col. Mike Kirby (John Wayne) is eager to leave the base and head off to the front. Plenty of men are also eager to follow him. Sneaky Sgt. Petersen is caught stealing supplies and is recruited. Reporter George Beckwith joins them but his paper objects to the war. At the firebase, Capt. Nim (George Takei) leads the local South Vietnamese troops.This is heroic, sincere, propagandistic, and patriotic. It even attempts at light humor. It is old fashion. The local girls are pretty. There is no mention of drugs. We are the good guys and the bad guys are evil. There are heroic deaths on our side and countless deaths by the enemy. This was released months after the Tet offensive. Its success comes from a need to escape the TV news coverage of the war. The cheesy humor does clash like sticking sitcom leftovers into a war drama meal. It's not so much the writing but the music cues and broad comedy. If the jokey scenes can be cut out, this would be much better. It's not the deepest examination of the war but it does have good production value.

THE GREEN BERETS is John Wayne's much-lamented Vietnam War epic which shows the situation in a positive light in regard to America's involvement. The story is heavily politicised and was made as a rebuke to the growing anti-war movement in the USA, which Wayne would have no truck with. Me, all of this subtext stuff is irrelevant, I just want to know if a film is entertaining or not.The answer is a yes here, although THE GREEN BERETS is not without flaws. Running at nearly two and a half hours, the film is overlong and stodgy in places, particularly during the gruelling midsection. Things pick up for some impressively sprawling battle sequences in the latter part, but the special effects aren't quite up to par and the film does look cheap in places.Still, the cast keeps you watching, not least Wayne himself who is all gruff and brave, if you can ignore the fact that he's way too old to be fighting on the front line. Aldo Ray is another favourite of mine and he has a ball as the tough sergeant. The only character I felt out of place was David Janssen's reporter, added to the story to bring some moralising to the piece; it wasn't really required, I thought. George Takei is a welcome presence as a South Vietnamese fighter.THE GREEN BERETS is surprisingly vicious in places, not holding back from showing some of the horrors of warfare in Vietnam; I'm talking brutal jungle traps, kids and animals getting slaughtered, punji sticks everywhere you walk. It's this no-holds-barred approach to the material that keeps it watchable, and a neat counterpoint to the later anti-war Vietnam epics of the 1970s and '80s.

This is one of the most unintentionally funny films from Hollywood. Here we have a 60-something John Wayne and Aldo Ray chasing the Viet Cong in the jungles of Vietnam (and maybe Cambodia). At every turn we have John Wayne and company preaching to an increasingly humiliated David Jansen (playing a "liberal" journalist) how horrid and animalistic the enemy is. And, of course, how humane and brave and dedicated to freedom that we (Americans) are. (All that between bombing the natives.) And, yes, one of the Americans adopts a Vietnamese orphan and, if memory serves, the dastardly communist kill the boy!!!! Oh, it makes me want to get a gun and go after those godless commies!!!But all is not funny.Well, this clearly is a pro-war, right-winger's dream come true. Re-fighting and war and winning not only the battles but the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. It features two Asian-Americans, one of Chinese extraction and another of Japanese extraction, somehow letting us know how noble this war was. But in the end, like the sun setting in the east coast of Vietnam, the whole film becomes an illusion. A lie. A big, horrific lie told to Americans. The lie was known to the Vietnamese, however. Our big bad military, in the end, was battled to a stalemate. The Tet offensive let us know how uninformed (intentionally?) the Americans were about the strength of the enemy. John Wayne went to war and brought us back a sick, horrific war in which communism remained entrenched and the thoughts of freedom, liberty and the American way were shown to be illusions. Except when they came in the form of bombs and bullets and body counts. John Wayne led the charge in the "Green Berets" but it should have been titled "The Red Herring" for its lies and diversions. In reality we lost the war. Americans, since WWII keep hoping to win a war. It's been 60s years since we have won a war. They just don't make wars the way they used to.

John Wayne picks two "A-teams" of green berets for a special mission into South Vietnam. He has to bring along reporter David Janssen, who believes America should withdraw from the war. This one's controversial and divisive, principally among political types. I gotta tell you that sort of thing bores me to tears. Still, I've avoided watching this for years because of its reputation. I had no desire to see Duke in a clunker if I could avoid it. I was happily surprised when I finally did watch it. This is a pretty good war movie with some solid performances and a great theme song. The little Vietnamese kid was pretty treacly stuff, though. If you enjoy John Wayne movies, you should enjoy this one.