Hamburger Hill

Many excellent Vietnam films, in an attempt to present their own interpretation of America's darkest hour, ask many political questions vital to the war: "What were we fighting for?" "Was this worth it?" "When does morality take over?" "When does the fighting stop?"

On the other hand, "Hamburger Hill" doesn't need to state any such questions. Rather, it presents the viewer with the scenario-- a group of men trying to advance on a hill-- and allows him to come to his own conclusions. It is a wonderful display of characters from all walks of life, and how hard times brought them together. Some want to be there, others don't, but they call all make the same statement: When it comes to their determination to get on top of that hill and advance upon the enemy, all of those political questions "don't mean nothin'."

This is probably the best Vietman film as far as visuals go. The actions sequences are raw and gory, and the locations are incredibly depressing-- setting the perfect stage for a war movie. Combined with excellent performances by everyone involved, this is certainly an underrated film that presents a clear picture of what the war truly might have been like.

***1/2 out of ****

Unfairly forgotten and left in the slipstream of critical darlings Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill can proudly fly its own worthwhile flag. There's nothing preachy or political here, director John Irvin and writer James Carabatsos approach the subject with a refreshing humane honesty, making us viewers privy to the American soldiers mindset as they cope with life in Vietnam before an assault on some turd pile strategic hill, a battle that the survivors of that particular bloody conflict would call Hamburger Hill.

No matter what one feels about the war, the politics of such etc, the fact that quite often Vietnam films zoom in on the misdemeanours and egotistical sides of the American presence in Vietnam, tends to detract from the bravery of men and boys who were doing the job their government decreed they should do. Hamburger Hill addresses this, proudly so. Pace is deliberate and literate, building up to the assault on Hill 937, with little slices of kinetic action inserted along the way to tantalise and torment in equal measure.

Not all the acting is smart, there's a cast of up and coming thesps on show that features some who have gone on to be "name" actors, while others that were out of their depth subsequently found a level more befitting their abilities. Yet this is also a cunning tactic in the film's favour, no stars needed here, young adult actors without baggage or headlines kind of feels appropriate for this portrayal of soldiers in an alien world, many of whom would lay their shattered bodies down in the mud at Hamburger Hill. 8/10

This is one of the very best and most realistic movies on the Vietnam War. There is no politicizing angst like "Platoon" and no flights of fantasy and metaphysics like "Full-Metal Jacket" or "Apocalypse Now". Those movies were too full of themselves and their "message" (and Oliver Stone, in particular, sought more to advance his political viewpoints by distortion rather than show realistic combat). These guys in the 101st Airborne were engaged in a brutal, actual battle. From the first ambush scene through each of the assaults on the hill, realism was achieved. The North Vietnamese hiding safe in their bunkers during air-strikes, only to emerge and start shooting and rolling grenades down the hill again on the paratroopers--all real. The conversations among the troops, about what they would do when they got home, what kind of car they would buy, are all typical of what I remember from my year over there in the infantry. There was no pontificating about good and evil as with Oliver Stone's much overrated "Platoon". Most of all, it showed guys trying just to take care of each other, while still carrying on with a meat-grinder of a mission. The actors were all virtually unknown at the time this was made, but acquitted themselves well. This movie was unfortunately underpromoted and slipped virtually unnoticed through the theaters, leaving most of us to catch it in the video stores. I am glad I came across it. If you missed this one, go rent it.

Hamburger Hill is all too often compared cruelly (and unfairly) to Oliver Stone's Platoon, a film that predates it by a single year and marked a return to Vietnam by American cinema, almost a decade after Cimino and Coppolla set the bar for celluloid commentary on the conflict. In following Platoon's realistic approach as opposed to the stylised, more artistic nature of these earlier films, as well as Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (another film Hamburger Hill was forced to compete with), John Irvin's film was seen as an inferior copy and is not remembered alongside these aforementioned films as a definitive Vietnam War film.

In truth, Hamburger Hill deserves to stand apart from Platoon as having its own approach and method. Hamburger Hill outstrips any other Vietnam War film in its pursuit of realism, going beyond Stone's fictionalised characters with their spiritual and ideological battles. It tells the true story of the bloody assault on Hill 937, from the perspective of a platoon of mostly new recruits (FNGs or F**king New Guys) lead by a core of experienced troops, headed by Dylan McDermott as the weary but passionate Sergeant Frantz. Irvin spends plenty of time letting us be introduced to the characters, their quirks, their cliques and their internal feuds before letting them see meaningful combat. As the film progresses, so does their relationship to each other and to the war they're fighting.

Hamburger Hill's god is resolutely in the details, and it in these details that most of the film's best moments lie. The little scenes, lines and moments have the air of true anecdotes: often brief, insignificant moments in the larger picture yet they stick in the mind and add up to create a collage of impression. Hamburger Hill is probably the most realistic Vietnam film yet made, and the wealth of details give a sense that this film is the closest we've seen to actually being a soldier in Vietnam. There's none of the involved psychological exploration of a single character like Apocalypse Now, none of Full Metal Jacket's black humour and archly artificial dialogue and none of Platoon's symbolic drama. The most important and impacting moments are always those of the actual conflict: from the headless corpse to the half-filled canteen to the agonising friendly fire scene.

Hamburger Hill is primarily a combat picture, concerned with the ugly vicissitudes of the battlefield and its impact on the people involved, and Irvin captures both the drama and the horror of combat effectively. The combat sequences are never short of either excitement, pathos or intensity. Off the battlefield, the film doesn't have the philosophical meditation that gives Apocalypse Now its enduring resonance, but it is not completely without things to say. The film is utterly anti-war but at the same time pro-soldier: it celebrates the men who fought through the horrific conditions, showing us what they had to deal with, from the anti-war protesters at home who convince a soldier's girlfriend to stop writing to him because it is "immoral" to the faceless Blackjack who conducts the bloodshed from afar and through the simple physical conditions they endured. Irvin's message is that whatever your stance on the conflict, the men there deserve respect, particularly because almost none of them are there to consciously represent any moral or political position.

Hamburger Hill's utilitarian design may prevent it from really being a cinematic classic, but the only chief complaint is that it is dramatically unsatisfying on occasions. The climax, in particular, does not feel suitably impacting compared to the violence that preceded it, and the film simply slows down to an end without any significant flourish. This, ultimately, is a product of its realism: the battle of Hamburger Hill did not have satisfying dramatic structure because it was a real event and Irvin deliberately maintains this reality right to the very end, an admirable gesture. Unfortunately, the director's fulfilment of his own artistic manifesto comes at the sacrifice of audience satisfaction: Hamburger Hill is ultimately too realistic to reach the pinnacle of artistic accomplishment.

In the mid-to-late '80s, America finally came to terms with the Vietnam War, exorcising their demons via popular culture. On TV, we had Vietnam veterans The A-Team coming to the rescue of the needy. On the radio, Paul Hardcastle told us that the average age was 'n-n-n-n-nineteen', while Stan Ridgeway recounted the story of an awfully big marine. In the cinemas, Chuck Norris was Missing In Action, Rambo asked 'Do we get to win this time?', Tom Cruise was Born on the Fourth of July, Robin Williams was screeching 'Good Morning', Michael J. Fox suffered the Casualties of War, and Kubrick's jacket was of the full metal variety. Oliver Stone's Vietnam film Platoon even cleaned up at the Oscars, winning four awards, including Best Picture.

It's understandable that Hamburger Hill, with its cast of relative unknowns and second-tier director, didn't receive quite as much attention as the aforementioned heavy-hitters, but if you're serious about war movies, don't let the lack of any big names put you off: the film is just as worthy of praise as Platoon, if not more-so, the green cast only adding to the film's already palpable authenticity. Shot in the thick jungles and even thicker mud of the Phillipines, the film tells of one of the most costly battles of the Vietnam War, the fight for Hill 937 in the Ashau Valley, known to grunts as Hamburger Hill. Director John Irvin's aim is to capture the horrors of war in all their bloody detail, and the sense of realism he achieves is remarkable: when his characters die, they don't throw their arms up in slow motion to the strains of Adagio for Strings… they do so in a sudden welter of gore, hammering home the notion that war is hell.

By the end of Hamburger Hill, the viewer is left as emotionally drained as its surviving characters are physically exhausted.