Going Gung-Ho

In the recent movie “We Were Soldiers,” a war correspondent, dazed after a chaotic and bloody battle in the early phase of the Vietnam War, faces the microphones of fellow reporters and says: “I’m not sure how to tell this story.” He could have been speaking for Hollywood.

With seven war movies deployed in the last six months and more on the way, the nation’s screens are awash in combat, and the movies portray the military in a far more positive light than it has been accustomed to in recent years.

By sheer coincidence, the recent films--including “Behind Enemy Lines” (set in Bosnia), “Hart’s War” (World War II), “Black Hawk Down” (Somalia) and “We Were Soldiers” (Vietnam)--were all in production well before the Sept. 11 attacks and were not inspired by the ensuing resurgence of patriotism. Rather, industry executives said, they had grown out of a continuing national appreciation for the veterans of World War II, championed in D-day anniversary celebrations and in the successful 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan.”

But the recent wave of films has struck a chord with audiences newly appreciative of men and women in uniform. “We Were Soldiers” has grossed more than $64 million in four weeks; “Black Hawk Down” has grossed about $108 million so far and “Behind Enemy Lines” nearly $60 million.

Coming films, although also in production or finished before Sept. 11, feature plots variously based on Navajo soldiers who use their language to encode military secrets in World War II (“Windtalkers”); a crisis aboard the Soviet Union’s first nuclear submarine during the Cold War (“K-19: The Widowmaker”); POWs captured by the Japanese in World War II and forced to build a “death railway” in Thailand (“To End All Wars”); and an American soldier who eluded the Japanese and built his own empire in the Philippine jungle (“They Fought Alone”).

Industry executives stress the coincidence of the timing and insist these movies were not produced to take advantage of the national mood. One new film, “Harrison’s Flowers,” evokes an eerie comparison with the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl only weeks ago. MGM delayed the release of “Windtalkers” from November until this summer because of fears that it would have come too soon after Sept. 11 and the beginning of the military campaign in Afghanistan.

Bob Levin, MGM’s president of worldwide marketing and distribution, said that what has fueled studio interest in war movies was Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” which grossed $216 million domestically and spawned a “rebirth of the concept of honor and sacrifice of military service.” In what was then an unprecedented portrayal of the grisly nature of combat, public response showed that “an audience wants some kind of realistic look at it, not a completely sanitized look,” he said.

Levin objected to a phrase he hears frequently, “all these war movies.” Any film’s success depends on whether it is well made, he said, not whether its theme tries to connect with current events or a public sentiment.

Nevertheless, scholars such as film historian Thomas Doherty, assistant professor of American studies at Brandeis University and author of the war-movie book “Projections of War,” say the films signal a shift in the national mood. “An antiwar film probably wouldn’t get made or released after Sept. 11,” he said.

Indeed, the military prison drama “The Last Castle” was briefly delayed last fall and its advertising overhauled to eliminate potentially disturbing images. The film grossed $18 million.

In the current atmosphere, contemplative or bluntly antiwar projects probably would seem out of place. “Three Kings,” a cynical look at the Gulf War that was released in 1999, and “The Thin Red Line,” a 1998 World War II film with an anti-military perspective, grossed a modest $61 million and $36 million, respectively. More recently, the prisoner-of-war drama “Hart’s War” has earned $19 million.

Lack of interest in such approaches is not limited to movies. The play “War Letters” closed last month in Beverly Hills after 19 performances. “We misread the zeitgeist,” said producer Susan Dietz. “This is about psychology, sociology, politics, the intellectual climate of war. ‘Black Hawk Down’ is a two-hour street fight,” she said. “People like the gruesome, bloody, violent nature of certain films.”

Movies tend to reflect the values of their time, Doherty said, and spins can be remarkably diverse.

For example, in movies about World War I, notably 1930’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” war often was portrayed as a meaningless waste, he said. Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 “Paths of Glory” stands as a trenchant document of war’s potential for hypocrisy.

“When World War II comes along, Hollywood suddenly has to tell you a different story. Now war is a moral enterprise. The message in World War II films [such as ‘Casablanca’ in 1942] is you must sacrifice, and good people do die. It’s worth it in the end.”

Korean War movies were somewhat more ambiguous. “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” (1954) offered an examination of the war’s ultimate futility but featured vivid aerial combat scenes--and military justification. “I Want You” (1951) explored the effects of that war on a small-town family.

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Vietnam War Portrayed as ‘Total Moral Confusion’

In the major Vietnam War movies (“The Deer Hunter,” 1978; “Coming Home,” 1978; “Apocalypse Now,” 1979; “Platoon,” 1986; “Full Metal Jacket,” 1987; “Born on the Fourth of July,” 1989), war was “total moral confusion,” Doherty said. None of those was made until years after the last U.S. helicopter left Saigon.

In the relatively small genre of war movies, the World War II theme is the most popular. Vietnam presents filmmakers with a sticky dramatic problem, mainly that the U.S. couldn’t claim victory. UCLA film historian Howard Suber said, “We were the big guy, defending forces of truth, justice and saving the world for democracy, and we couldn’t bring down the folks crawling around in caves like rats. That’s not how the story is supposed to go.”

Likewise, Doherty said he thinks American culture is “in a place where it appreciates the uniform again, but it still doesn’t feel good about the Vietnamese War.”

The films “Black Hawk Down” and “We Were Soldiers” sculpt the genre to appeal less to ideology than to concepts of male bonding and the “warrior code,” Doherty said. They’re fighting for their brothers in arms with the slogan “leave no man behind.”

“We Were Soldiers,” as well as the coming “K-19: The Widowmaker,” starring Harrison Ford as the captain of the Soviet submarine, also reflect a new appreciation for the courage and humanity of the enemy.

An antiwar film is a difficult proposition in any era, Doherty said. Paraphrasing filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, he observed that war’s inherent drama and excitement can be so compelling that they work against any message.

“We Were Soldiers,” based on the book “We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young” by Joseph L. Galloway and retired Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, intends to blaze a middle path. Galloway described the book and movie as “antiwar” not “anti-Vietnam War.”

The movie comes at a time when perspectives on the Vietnam War have evolved and become more nuanced. Beyond the obvious value of hindsight, scholars have gained access to declassified war documents and open dialogues with military leaders and policymakers on both the U.S. and North Vietnamese sides. Combat veterans such as Tim O’Brien (“The Things They Carried”) and dissidents such as David Harris (“Our War”) continue to publish memoirs.

Galloway asserted that no previous war films about Vietnam told the truth. Those films “portrayed the American soldiers as if they were all clones of Lt. Calley,” he said, referring to the most prominent figure in the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese villagers. “They just have a picture of your average American soldier as a baby killer, village burner, a dope-crazed fool who’s rampaging across the country,” he said.

“I did four tours in Vietnam. I didn’t see soldiers like that. I saw guys willing to give up their lives for the guys next to them. They were drafted; many went unwillingly. They were very honorable people. They made the best out of a truly awful situation. Absolutely, that was the majority.”

In Vietnam-era books, Galloway and Moore saw “a lot of political baggage, a lot of finger-pointing,” Galloway said. “We thought no one has thought to say ‘thank you’ to those who did serve honorably.” Their book, however, points a finger at U.S. policymakers who adopted a disastrous strategy of aiming to win by attrition.

In contrast to the homespun tone that bothered critics of the movie version of “We Were Soldiers,” author David Halberstam (“The Best and the Brightest”) said Moore and Galloway’s book spoke more directly to the futility of the war, driving home the point that after 305 U.S. soldiers and 3,561 Vietnamese were killed in the battles at Ia Drang in late 1965, the soldiers withdrew from the valley. “The terrible sacrifice and then ... gone,” Halberstam said.

The movie depicts U.S. soldiers as battered but victorious. In reality, each side claimed victory. Though Halberstam called the book the “single best piece of reporting on combat in war,” he found the movie more “conventional.”

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How Much Realism Does the Public Want?

Speculations about Hollywood’s current motives abound. Some say that, faced with a shifting tide, Hollywood may be trying to drape itself in the American flag to make up for earlier left-wing sympathies. Others think the new movies may reflect a general urge to revise history so that Americans don’t come across as losers.

Ultimately, the industry respects the bottom line. “Hollywood is the quintessential capitalist industry,” said film historian Suber. “If money is to be made with an extreme right-wing view of war in Vietnam, I guarantee you it will be made.”

Hollywood is still gauging what the public wants and how much graphic realism it will tolerate.

Sony Pictures’ “Black Hawk Down” raised combat gore and intensity to new levels, MGM’s Levin said. Many people before its release “wondered whether it had gone too far,” he said, but “if you look at the box-office gross, [it] didn’t hold back the success of ‘Black Hawk Down.’”

MGM’s “Windtalkers” contains scenes so violent that some viewers at a screening at the ShoWest theater owners’ convention in Las Vegas said they had to shut their eyes. Even so, “I think ‘Windtalkers’ is totally acceptable,” said Levin.

Some filmmakers already perceive the market is saturated with the simplistic, “they’re all heroes” war movies.

It takes an average of two years to bring a project to the screen, and with the uncertainties of the war in Afghanistan, the public mood could change quickly, said John Davis, producer of “Behind Enemy Lines.”

Davis said he’s developing a coming-of-age film in which a soldier’s real struggle to be a hero takes place in an “artificial context”: the Korean War.

By the time the film is finished, he anticipates the public will be ready for a more philosophical vision of war.