I came to this movie after reading two detailed military history books about the battle. That proved essential because I don't think I would have learned very much about it from watching the film. For the positives: technically, the level of detail was excellent. With the exception of using M41 Walker Bulldog tanks instead of M24 Chaffee tanks, the equipment, weaponry, uniforms, badges etc. Were authentic. The timeline of the battle and specific incidents were perfect. So why did I come away feeling it was such a missed opportunity? Dien Bien Phu was famously referred to as France's "Verdun in the jungle". On the French side, French, Vietnamese, Algerian, African and other soldiers, able bodied and wounded, slept in water filled trenches by day and fought, often hand to hand in isolated actions, to protect them from dusk until dawn as the Vietminh launched repeated human wave attacks across ground that had been churned to mud through artillery fire. For both sides victory was a chance to gain advantage at the Geneva Peace Conference which had begun on 26 April and would only set the stage for the larger war that followed. Dien Bien Phu fell on 7 May and the Conference concluded on 21 July. That was the historical and political reality. Unbelievably in this film the Vietminh are invisible until the closing scenes of the French surrender, when they appear by the thousand. That any fighting is going on at all can only be inferred by the mass graves of French and allied soldiers, the overcrowded "field hospitals", the regular sound of incoming and outgoing artillery as soldiers sit in their trenches and talk, or listen to last radio messages that yet another position is being over run. For a war film showing the futility of ordering soldiers to risk their lives so their leaders can gain a political advantage I'd recommend Pork Chop Hill (1959). This could have so easily been so much more.
