Asalto a Firebase Gloria

The Siege of Firebase Gloria is not a very well known Vietnam war film. In fact it hardly gets a mention at all and is overshadowed by films such as Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and others.

The premise is as follows: a Marine patrol led by sergeant Hafner (the great R. Lee Ermey) ends up in a remote US Army outpost deep in the jungles of Vietnam right at the start of the Tet offensive. Hafner takes command and must fend off waves of attacks by the Vietcong and NVA.

The story is quite interesting of how these men, outnumbered and almost forsaken must defend themselves against all odds. Although Ermey's role isn't too big (the film focuses on a few key soldiers), he is great in every frame he is in. Having been an actual Marine, he reprises his role as a tough commander with a witty tongue. The film in general find a nice balance between the main story while at the same time showing how war takes its toll on men. Interestingly enough the North Vietnamese commanders are also portrayed and fortunately not as cartoonish enemies but competent leaders.

The production values are quite good, there are lots of real helicopters, the sets and location are grand and well built and the action scenes quite vast in their scale.

However the film doesn't reach the levels achieved by Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket. Despite that, its still worth a watch.

"The people were friendly. We liked them and they liked us... so it really hurt us to see their heads on stakes." This line, dryly spouted by R. Lee Ermey's character Sergeant Major Bill Hafner of the United States Marine Corps' Force Recon, begins a brutal portrayal of war at its worst. This film pulls no punches, showing combat for what it is: a slaughter.

Do not come into this film with a soft heart. If scenes showing piles of dead children, teenage Vietnamese prostitutes wrapping themselves in dynamite to act as suicide bombers or "sappers", American nurses and Embassy secretaries being machine-gunned by Viet Cong soldiers, the execution of prisoners by both the V.C. and Marines, and the wholesale slaughter of an entire generation of young men (both American and Vietnamese) have the potential to bother you, you might want to avoid this one. "Siege of Firebase Gloria" is frighteningly graphic and realistic and the only thing that keeps this movie from being little more than a snuff film is the humanity of the characters.

While the men on both sides commit acts that most people would consider atrocities, we can see them for what they are: scared human beings, some of them barely more than boys ("No way - Mighty Mouse could never get us out of this s**t," says Private "Shortwave" Coates) who don't know why they have to do these horrible things, only that they must if they want to survive.

In the end, it is the North Vietnamese Army Colonel Cao Van who gives the best summary of the situation: "The courage of your enemies does you honor."

It's 1968. The Tet holidays is approaching and a ceasefire is expected. Hardnosed Sergeant Major Bill Hafner (R. Lee Ermey) leads a weary squad into a village where almost everyone has been massacred. They guard the remote Firebase Gloria and struggle against a tough guerilla campaign. Their superiors don't expect the coming full scale onslaught.

The production is Australian and filmed in the Philippines for Vietnam. I doubt that there is much involvement from the American military although they probably rented a lot of stuff from the Philippines military. It has lots of guns, men, and explosions. They're not filmed in the most exciting ways. It's a lot Rambo style mass shootings. It's a B-movie, but at least it's a solid B-movie.

If you are tired of all of the Hollywood films that disparage the military in general and dedicated soldiers, sailor and airmen specifically, this is your movie. This also is not a gung-ho armed services recruiting film, because of its very real depiction of the horors of war, it received a well deserved "R" rating.

i had bragged on this film so much over the last year that i finally pleaded with IMDB to include it, and they did (thank you).

i finally got home from a contract and found several folks had put in comments ahead of me. i respect these opinions expressed and am pleased that the film got such an immediate group of comments.

this movie is a shocker, and much of what it says is too painful to be accepted by most folks. i am not going to defend it... it is worthy of standing alone. but if you watched it and found it another RAH-RAH WE ARE AMERICANS film, a john wayne we win in the end shootem-up, then consider watching it again, but pretend you come from america, home of the north viet nam peoples and the round eyes are the invaders from a place far away and unimportant.... then see if you can count the autocracies committed in the name of their backward, wrong country. no, this is not a routine movie, not by any sense of the word.

by the way, Lee Ermey is a genuine, real live viet nam war hero, multiple tours, a leader of men... his performance is over the top for those of you who weren't there, but for us guys who had 3 feet of piled dirt between us and 500 of them at one time or the other, nothing sounded so good as a gruff old man saying that if we did as we were told, we would live to see morning.

catch Lee in 'purple hearts'