Review – The Green Berets

John Wayne directs and stars in this two-hour-long, inadvertent lesson on why we failed to prevail in Southeast Asia. Though this kind of simple-minded propaganda was popular during World War Two, this new conflict was a different kind of war that called for a different approach both in the field and in movie theaters. These guys don’t even get their uniforms dirty. That kind of thing might have played on the sands of Iwo Jima, but by 1968 it was fairly apparent that the reality on the ground was something else. It was a little nice to see something that wasn’t as whiny as the post-war pictures from both the left and the right. On the other hand, this is just inept. The depiction of combat is unrealistic; if you watch this, count the number of times you catch yourself thinking things like “If you guys bunch up like that, one grenade is going to take you all out” or “I don’t think the sun sets in the east.” The production values are bad. The story is silly, as is a lot of the dialogue. It’s genuinely painful to listen to talented actors Jack Soo and George Takei delivering lines that make them sound like they’re auditioning for a fourth role on the “Tarzan, Tonto and Frankenstein” skit. And the pace is highly uneven, leading to that most unpardonable of sins: the boring action movie. See if desperate