Metacritic-Rezensionen

Between its dreamy Philip Glass score, vivid location shooting, and strong early performances by future stars Dylan McDermott, Courtney Vance, Steven Weber, and Don Cheadle, Hamburger Hill stands out from the pack as one of the best of the Vietnam movies.

As a direct tribute to the dignity of the solider facing attacks on both their bodies and their souls it puts things in a salutary context.

Had the filmmakers resisted the temptation to politicize their material they might have made a great war movie. They might also have thought to give us some indication of the strategic significance of the hill. As it is, they've managed to create a deeply affecting, highly accomplished film.

Well-produced and directdd with an eye to documentary-like realism and authenticity, pic centers upon a military undertaking of familiar futility during the Vietnam War.

Time will eventually reveal that HAMBURGER HILL is one of the best and most realistic films made about the Vietnam War.

Two actors who do have good material, and make the most of it, are Courtney Vance, as the platoon's snappish, highly articulate medic, and Dylan McDermott, as the platoon's exhausted sergeant. Mr. Vance is particularly fine. The narrative picks up weight and momentum every time he comes on the screen. Also good is Tegan West, who plays yet another young, raw lieutenant who must depend on the patience of his men.

There are a couple of rocky moments, but the large cast of unknowns go through hell convincingly, and illustrate the randomness of mortality.

Hamburger Hill pays heartfelt, richly deserved tribute to the young American soldiers who fought so valiantly there. If only director John Irvin, who was in Vietnam in 1969 making a BBC documentary, and writer Jim Carabatsos, a Vietnam veteran, had been content to honor these men who were prepared to risk their lives in what had become a singularly unpopular war. But they don’t trust the soldiers’ brave actions to speak for themselves and instead give them a series of preachy, rabble-rousing speeches that add up to a diatribe against the anti-war movement at home rather than an attack on U.S. involvement in the war in the first place.

Less pretentious than Platoon and more attentive to the Vietnamese than The Deer Hunter, this picture proposes with a great deal of skill and sincerity that we honor and respect the men who suffered on our behalf without even beginning to consider why they did so, or to what effect.

Kudos to Vietnam vet Jim Carabatsos for writing Hamburger Hill, the only ’80s Nam film that truly showcases American heroism, but this dramatization of the charge up hellish Hill 937 lacks context and bitterly scapegoats peace activists and the media.