Por Amor e Honra

I enjoyed watching this entire movie.

Nothing like a romantic movie centered around one of the major wars we've had in the past.

This film tells the story of a young soldier of United States of America, who goes on an unauthorised trip back home to win back the girl of his dreams.

"Love and Honor" is not the ordinary chick flick. Not only does it have some battle scenes, it also shows very well the internal battles of the soldiers in choosing whether to defend his love or to defend his honour. The relationships of the two soldiers are very convincing and the two couple all have great chemistry with each other. I can feel the soldiers' torment in having to choose between love and the troops. I felt for the characters, and I was touched by their stories. I enjoyed watching "Love and Honor" a lot.

Speaking as a Vietnam war veteran who arrived in Vietnam the same summer as the movie takes place (1969) and who went on R&R in 1970, I found "Love and Honor" to be terribly annoying and insulting in its blaring inaccuracies that indicate that the producers did not employ (or else didn't listen to) any form of technical advisor.

1: When going on R&R (or leave) from Vietnam, we traveled in civilian clothes, not in our jungle fatigues.

2: When in any form of uniform, we wore an insignia showing rank. Those in the Army (soldiers) in Vietnam wore small, black, metal rank insignias that the enemy could not see from a distance. The guys in "Love and Honor" are not wearing any rank insignias at all.

3: The movie touts "military travels free." That is only when traveling on a military plane or a military chartered plane when the individual has specific orders to fly. When flying commercial, we showed our (leave or PCS) orders and then got 50% off by flying "Space Available," meaning we may or may not be getting on the next flight or the flight after that or the flight after that. There is absolutely no way any military member could have been on R&R in Hong Kong and from there flown out - let alone fly all the way to and all the way back from some location in the continental United States. And if the two soldiers had had any plans to try that stupid move, they would have elected to take R&R in Honolulu, not Hong Kong.

4: In one scene the soldier tries go say hello to a "round eye" in the states and he gets the finger and a buzz off, baby killer. He mumbles "whatever happened to 'thank you for your service.'" "Thank you for your service" was not invented until the recent, Middle East wars. The first time I heard, "Thank you for your service" was in 2014, when somebody noticed that my car, parked on Fort Bragg, has a (North Carolina) Vietnam Veteran license plate. When we got back from Vietnam (between 1965 and 1973), at best, nobody mentioned our service in that war at all.

Love and Honor tells the story of a soldier in Vietnam, Dalton, who takes extreme measures when he receives a Dear John from his girl back home; he jumps his RandR and flies back to Michigan to try to win her back. His buddy Mickey, perhaps only looking for a good adventure, perhaps genuinely trying to help his friend, flies back with him, and strangely finds true love himself when he meets a friend of the girl in the house they are living in. A problem--both girls are Vietnam protesters, and the fact that Dalton and Mickey are soldiers provides an awkward backdrop to their developing romances.

Love and Honor is a movie that is non-functional on a number of interesting levels, and is therefore strangely entertaining. This is a movie that is probably best taken as a sort of chick flick (romance burgeoning in an impossible situation) and on that level, it is mildly effective. In such movies, the drama does not have to be top quality--we get caught up in the silly story and suspend our disbelief to enjoy the tackiness of the whole thing.

The problem, however, is that Love and Honor occasionally veers off of this course and tries to be more serious. We get, for example, modest attempts at a realistic period piece; problem is that the movie does not seems realistic at all--scenes in Hong Kong were filmed in an airport built in the 1990s, and much of the movie seems like it has no sense of the period.

The movie occasionally tries to veer into the realm of serious drama related to the anxieties of war time, ala Born on the Forth of July. Problem is that our cast has the look of 21st century fashion models, kind of like watching a modern sitcom. It is not believable, and attempts at gritty realism seem to simply fall flat.

As a result, the movie seems very much like a 21st century teenage fantasy about what the Vietnam period was like. If you like watching this kind of stuff on TV, well then you are fine sitting in front of this movie. If, however, you are looking for The Deer Hunter, or Born on the Fourth of July, then you are bound to chuckle at how silly the movie looks or acts.

With Love and Honour, Liam Hemsworth and Teresa Palmer bring some Aussie flavour to the quintessential American staple: a love story set in wartime.

The film tells the tale of Mickey (Hemsworth) and Dalton (Austin Stowell), two soldiers who spend their week off from Vietnam flying back to America, where Dalton plans to reunite with his best gal Jane (Aimee Teegarden). Mickey, ever the adventurer, tags along for the ride before getting bitten by the love bug himself in the form of Candace (Palmer).

If the plot sounds older than time itself, it's because it is, but the film remains at least a bearably enjoyable romp. In what proves to be both a blessing and a curse, Love and Honour plays out like two films in one.

In the first half, the acting on display is above par, and while the script fails to account for some plot holes, it manages to avoid an avalanche of clichés that films of this genre are typically so prone to.

Disappointingly, the second half labours, jumping right back onto the beaten track en route to a bland and entirely expected conclusion. A decent option as a mind-numbing stimulus, watching this ninety-three minute film will feel like…well, about an hour-and-a-half.

*There's nothing I love more than a bit of feedback, good or bad. So drop me a line on jnatsis@iprimus.com.au and let me know what you thought of my review. If you're looking for a writer for your movie website or other publication, I'd also love to hear from you.*