Wonderful character development!

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA is a little-known Vietnam War flick, Australian-made and shot in the Philippines by cult director Brian Trenchard-Smith, a man best known for making low rent action spectacle including THE MAN FROM HONG KONG and TURKEY SHOOT. This one tells the story of the Tet Offensive, in which the Vietcong rose up to attack many American bases, and focuses on the small-scale siege of a poorly-defended base occupied by the excellent R. Lee Ermey and his men. Ermey really acts his socks off here and brings to life the heart and soul of the picture. The film offers an explosion of endless violence and edge-of-the-seat action scenes in which the realism is key and the bloodshed extraordinarily grisly at times. Trenchard-Smith is at home both shooting the vibrant fire fights as well as eliciting strong tough guy performances from his key cast members, not least Wings Hauser who has also never been better than he is here. Watch out for DIRTY HARRY regular Albert Popwell as a tough-guy sergeant fleshing out the testosterone-packed cast.

When I started to watch this movie, I hadn't heard anything about it and didn't expect very much. I was therewith pleasantly surprised. Make no mistake, this is no masterpiece, but a well done entertaining piece of work which (even) makes you think a little at times.I found the acting to be uniformly quite decent, even though the VietCong are mostly closer to being cartoon characters than real people. What carries the movie though, is the performance by Ermey, R. Lee. Once again he shows there is nobody better than him for roles like these. He is simply excellent! The camera and sound are both satisfactory, and the special f/x as well, considering we are talking about a motion picture made in the eighties (no CGI, etc.). All in all, after almost 30 years, this film withstands the test of time and is definitely worth a look.

Spoilers ahead.Changing rules for the draft in the early 70's created a window in time that accommodated some young men to be excluded from war. It turned out that if you were born in 1958 or 1959, you didn't even have to register for the draft. Now, philosophical positions on defending our nation aside, the fortune of being exempt from kill-or-be-killed was not lost on me. Consequently movies of a certain high caliber about Nam such as Firebase Gloria (FB) have a sobering effect on me. The scarier and more horrific a movie is about that war, the more intense I am grateful I didn't have to go. After watching FB I am as grateful as grateful ever gets. The movie did however have it's share of yuks, even if it perhaps took a sometimes morbid sense of humor to "get it." Decapitation, for instance, is not something I find particularly funny. A one-liner that follows from actor R. Lee Ermey playing Hafner, by contrast, added a sense of occasional relief to the otherwise expertly induced horror. I could go on, but suffice it to say if you dig war flicks and want something askew from standard shoot-die fare, this one might find you happier for having watched it. If, that is to say, it's possible at all to be "happy" for watching a movie about Vietnam.

This is one of the better VN war movies from the "eye level" of small unit tactics, except for some small hiccups, such as a machine gunner not taking cover in a firefight("Private Ryan" was much worse on this aspect). I could not, however, help being irritated by the traditional Army vs. USMC rivalry being put out in this film as USMC Superiority (Something Ermy did not protest against I'd reckon). This is insulting to the Army specs units such as Rangers and Green Berets. It is a stupid argument, as the functions of each are essentially different, Marines are Sea/Land force insertion specialists, Rangers are Recon and Commando Raiders, Green Berets are Teachers and advisor's. The same anti Army mythology was used in "Boys in Company C", which Ermy was in also BTW. (I'm better situated than most to comment on this, as I was a Marine Reserve before I went on active duty in the Army back in 72' I have insight into both services and the atmosphere of those times). That being said, it should be noted that there was a lot of dope use and undisciplined behavior in many of the large troop units (draftee) back then, as reflected in the larger culture of the day.(Look up Operation Red Snow, the NVA's use of heroin as a weapon in VN) I would say this is to Nam' films what "Pork Chop Hill" was to Korean War films...