How Sleep the Brave

Worst Vietnam movie ever made? From what I remember (I saw this in the early 80s) it was the most realistic depiction of the stupidity of war since Paths of Glory and until Saving Private Ryan.

Storyline gave way (to a certain extent) to simply showing it like it must have been - normal guys forced into being unfeeling killers, simply because the likelihood of your colleagues getting killed made it not worthwhile getting to know them well.

See it for yourself, it won't be everyone's cup of tea but it's worth a look.

I watched this movie about 30 times when i was a kid, i recently found it after years of hunting as its a very rare film. Watching it as an adult was like dejavu as i rememmbered most parts of the film, but i can now understand the horrors and politics of that war much better, making it more sad to me nowadays. The plot has not been given any spending power, and the English countryside is obvious, but this shows that there wasnt a plot during the Vietnam war, only the deaths of young men at the hands of eachother. It did make more of an impact on me as a kid but its still a powerful film that will have you looking into the window of the souls of those depicted. If you did see this movie as a kid too, nostalgia at its best.

AKA Once apon a time in Vietnam AKA Combat zone

10/10 for me.

I watched How Sleep The Brave as a teenager in the early eighties and was blown away by it. Yes, my friend and I laughed at the English-looking countryside (we had no idea at the time that it actually was made in England!), but we both thought it was a fantastic film about the realities of battle in the Vietnam war. "Worst Vietnam Movie Ever?" - no way! OBVIOUSLY the film was low budget but if you can see past that you will find yourself with an engrossing and moving film experience.

When Platoon came out a few years later I was amazed at the similarities to How Sleep The Brave. Platoon was in the news for weeks with talk about America exposing and coming to terms with the realities of the Vietnam war, and generally blowing sunshine up Oliver Stone's a*se. Well I reckon Olly watched How Sleep The Brave and got the idea for Platoon! I immediately picked up on the use of haunting classical music to accentuate the tragedy, futility and brutality of the war. How Sleep The Brave was way ahead of the rest with it's ideas and techniques on the treatment of the subject.

Generally I see the film as a fantastic finished product of a great idea on a very low budget. It delivers the message and then some. I haven't seen the film since that first time, but I will try to rent it out again and may post more comments with my current thoughts.

I saw How Sleep The Brave on video in about 1982. It had already gained a reputation between my group of video watching school friends as being pretty nasty so it had to be seen. After watching it I was pretty shocked mainly by the excessive use of foul language (as a kid you love swearing but this film set new limits) and the realistic combat footage. I have the original UK VHS release and watched it a few years back and do you know what........I still didn't notice that it wasn't shot in Vietnam! It was only after reading the previous reviews on here that I realised it was shot in Berkshire. (Maybe I watch too many low budget films and am now immune to such subtleties as Berkshire trying to portray Vietnbam). So, with a new interest, I dug out the tape and watched it again last night and yes, some shots (i.e. the base camp) are blatantly non tropical but, as much of the action is shot in close up, you don't notice this as you're more interested in whether the point man is about go 'deep 6' and not the foliage they're walking through. This was a VERY low budget film and if you ignore the forest backgrounds the action is still pretty intense. Also, the sun was out which never happens in th e UK hence I was so easily confused :) As already mentioned the acting is atrocious but I'm sure not every GI was Tom Hanks Acting Academy Trained. As with all low budget / no budget films you often need to look past the technical inadequacies to enjoy the movie. I would compare this film to Last House on the Left, which is now rightly commended as being a classic. However, to the casual viewer all they would see is an old, no budget movie with poor acting and general scenes of ultra distastefulness. To anyone now not in their mid thirties you must remember that this film was released on video at a time when simply watching the next video in the Video Library (remember them??) was a special treat. There were literally thousands of low budget films available and HSTB does not warrant being slated as one of the worst (Trust me - I'v seen loads worse). A commendable attempt, using low budget trickery, to relay the closeness and ultimate waste of the Vietnam War. In this day and age maybe someone should go to Weymouth Beach and remake HSTB on Digital Video but updated for the current Gulf crisis? I'm sure in 20 years time some wise ass would say 'this film is terrible because the sand wasn't the correct colour' - MISSING THE POINT!

How Sleep the Brave is one of the more peculiar offerings from jack-of-all-genres Lindsay Shonteff and his late producer-wife Elizabeth Gray (or 'Lyndon James Swift' and 'Elizabeth Laurie' as they're billed here). Once earmarked as a competent gun for hire filmmaker capable of delivering black and white chillers like Devil Doll and second feature sex films like Permissive, Shonteff's latter day projects tend to be out of time James Bond spoofs, a genre most other filmmakers put to bed at the end of the Sixties. By the early Nineties Shonteff was this genre's one and only practitioner.

A cheapjack Vietnam War epic produced at a time when such a subject spelled poison at the box office, How Sleep the Brave is another demonstration of Shonteff's stunning indifference to trends or public taste. The end result was by and large a financial failure for the director and remains seen by only the few. Gavcrimson encountered a tape of the film at the bottom of a bargain bin under the nonsense re-title 'The Forgotten Parallel'. In a typical tightwad move the (quite literally) bottom of the barrel video distributor had heavily edited the film to fit on a bog standard one hour tape. Despite Shonteff's stated serious intentions which include ending the film with a quote from the commander of the Viet Cong Forces in Vietnam puzzlingly over the suicidal heroism demonstrated by American troops, How Sleep the Brave is bereft of much intelligence and is distinguished from your run of the mill euro-war movie only by its poverty row status. The film was shot in the UK, or more specifically with Berkshire locations posing as Vietnam, an audacious touch that only ultra low-budget practitioners like Shonteff or Mancunian action man Cliff Twemlow would have dared to pull off. A bunch of nobody actors play an inexperienced platoon trapped behind enemy lines and surrounded by the Viet Cong. From a tent in the middle of a field their hot-headed, cigar chomping boss makes a futile attempt to save them by sending out a helicopter. Most of the film alternates between the men bitching to each other about Vietnamese prostitutes and being polished off at the hands of 'Charlie'. You can tell when anything tragic is about to occur because Shonteff insists on scoring every casualty to a 'Greensleeves' type instrumental number. Shonteff also uses his Permissive technique of cryptically flashing forward to the horrors to come, and earns his chops as a low budget man by convincingly passing off leafy English locations as anything but. Unfortunately the latter piece of deception dictates much of How Sleep the Brave be shot in tight close-ups which combined with the sameness of the film's woodland settings makes this a visually repetitious experience. Kitted up in rented soldiers uniforms the Brit actors manage to maintain convincing American accents, but their performances aren't helped by abysmal dialogue like 'I should be at home selling grass, man', as well as a script seemly written by someone in the throws of Tourette's syndrome. The characters all remain clichéd gung-ho action men with little attempt made to get under their skin, nor is there any effort to shed light on the motivations of the Viet Cong. The film invests the Chinese actors with as much personality as extras in a badly dubbed kung-fu film. In the end How Sleep the Brave is about as insightful as a Vietnam recreation by a bunch of paintball enthusiasts, which is sadly what the film often resembles. The fact that it pre-dates 80's Hollywood fixation for Vietnam alongside having Berkshire double as a war zone gives the film a passing curiosity value.. but not enough to warrant tracking it down.