The title is from Herodotus who recorded from a plaque left by the several hundred Spartan warriors who died at the Battle of Thermopylae around 480BC. "Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by. That here, obedient to their laws, we lie." This is a war movie and carries several recognizable stereotypes but not the OLD stereotypes, not the braggart from Texas or the wise guy from New York, but rather men who differ in their attitudes towards the war.
Burt Lancaster is the experienced veteran of World War II, practical and kind of old for the rank of major. There is the gung ho lieutenant who is fiercely patriotic and desires nothing more than to kill Gooks. There is the educated naive corporal who refuses to reveal why he volunteered for Vietnam, and who is portrayed as an idiot begging the children of a village to accept chocolate from him. There is the seasoned master sergeant who knows it all but is burned out and takes to booze when off duty, unlike some of the others who are doing hard dope. There is the native guide who is usually used for comedy but here represents the stern and unyielding fact that war is brutal and there is no room for kindness. The black guy who handles communications at the command center provides some comedy relief. And there is the intelligence officer, the new lieutenant, who brings to Lancaster's command a systematic way of judging the threat to each outpost, and at whom Lancaster stares in wide-eyed disbelief as the officious young man gives his pitch. Some of the characters are overdrawn.
It's odd to see Americans and South Vietnamese using old-fashioned weapons of World War II. The Vietnamese seem like children carrying M-1s that are too big for them. No M-16s or anything. That came later. This is 1964 in the jungles of South Vietnam and we don't have many facilities available there, yet. It's from a novel written by Daniel Ford, the correspondent, not John Ford's grandson. Ford was able to get down with his men. He ate their rations, slept on a blanket in the bush, and bonded with them. He's left a blog in which he explains the difficulty he had getting his "novel" published and sold. Nobody was interested in Vietnam, yet. I remember the general lack of interest in 1964. I was about to leave civilization for a few years and my roommate brought my attention to an inconspicuous article in the New York Times about our increasing involvement. I politely dismissed its importance.
It was an ironic war in many respects, impossible to tell the good villagers from the bad villagers, much like today's asymmetric warfare. And politics was woven in and out of the war itself. Lancaster has learned that an outpost is about to be attacked so he asks for air support. There is a problem. The aircraft are grounded in Saigon because they may be necessary to suppress a coup against the South Vietnamese government. The American advisors don't win very much, if anything at all. The final scene doesn't bring up the usual "The End" because it wasn't the end. It just shows us "1964", with another decade of misery to come.
Burt Lancaster is the experienced veteran of World War II, practical and kind of old for the rank of major. There is the gung ho lieutenant who is fiercely patriotic and desires nothing more than to kill Gooks. There is the educated naive corporal who refuses to reveal why he volunteered for Vietnam, and who is portrayed as an idiot begging the children of a village to accept chocolate from him. There is the seasoned master sergeant who knows it all but is burned out and takes to booze when off duty, unlike some of the others who are doing hard dope. There is the native guide who is usually used for comedy but here represents the stern and unyielding fact that war is brutal and there is no room for kindness. The black guy who handles communications at the command center provides some comedy relief. And there is the intelligence officer, the new lieutenant, who brings to Lancaster's command a systematic way of judging the threat to each outpost, and at whom Lancaster stares in wide-eyed disbelief as the officious young man gives his pitch. Some of the characters are overdrawn.
It's odd to see Americans and South Vietnamese using old-fashioned weapons of World War II. The Vietnamese seem like children carrying M-1s that are too big for them. No M-16s or anything. That came later. This is 1964 in the jungles of South Vietnam and we don't have many facilities available there, yet. It's from a novel written by Daniel Ford, the correspondent, not John Ford's grandson. Ford was able to get down with his men. He ate their rations, slept on a blanket in the bush, and bonded with them. He's left a blog in which he explains the difficulty he had getting his "novel" published and sold. Nobody was interested in Vietnam, yet. I remember the general lack of interest in 1964. I was about to leave civilization for a few years and my roommate brought my attention to an inconspicuous article in the New York Times about our increasing involvement. I politely dismissed its importance.
It was an ironic war in many respects, impossible to tell the good villagers from the bad villagers, much like today's asymmetric warfare. And politics was woven in and out of the war itself. Lancaster has learned that an outpost is about to be attacked so he asks for air support. There is a problem. The aircraft are grounded in Saigon because they may be necessary to suppress a coup against the South Vietnamese government. The American advisors don't win very much, if anything at all. The final scene doesn't bring up the usual "The End" because it wasn't the end. It just shows us "1964", with another decade of misery to come.