Going Back

It is not serious "vietnam movie". It is melodramatic and unconvincing. Casper Van Dien's character is a plastic toy but not a real man. Story may be is not hopeless but realization is poor. Ending is funny.

To start off, I have to say that the European name, "Going Back" really suited this movie better than "Under Heavy Fire." I'm not much of a war movie fan, but as I'm trying to see more of Casper's stuff I took a chance.

As this is a story about the soldiers, and not the War, it was much easier for me to enjoy it. It takes place in the present day, and only shows the war when being remembered, or as footage taken on the scene. It's about a US troop during the Vietnam War who experienced a tragedy by friendly fire, and they blamed their captain (Casper). In the present day a reporter / historian wanted to help the remaining troop relive this tragedy, by revisiting Vietnam and reenacting the event to help them figure out what really happened, thus "Going Back."

Most of the present day scenes felt genuine, and the War memory scenes were used strictly to clarify or enhance emotion and not just to show the War. There was an especially touching present day scene where a Vietnamese woman Captain Ramsey went to visit sings him a BEAUTIFUL song to thank, "A soldier who has lost his way."

Certainly worth my time to see.

This story of US Marines going back to Vietnam is far fetched and the flashbacks may be a pastiche of events involving a number of different units. However, they catch the spirit of interaction of Marines, their noncoms and officers. Ramsey is a very believable captain, but in reality, he would have been at least a company commander and would not have been so directly involved in unit leadership. Otherwise, his and his marines' interactions were consistent with my experience.

So take the plot with a grain of salt, but watch closely the way the marines and their Navy Hospital Corpsman and Chaplain go about their business. It will give you a good understanding of how marines think and act in a combat environment.

That's the only way I would ever sit through this piece of crap again. Even before seeing the credits, I could tell that it was a Canadian production. It has a cheesy low budget look. Bad acting, terrible make up, bad script and low production values. The plot was a tired and worn out premise; A Commander wrongfully accused of getting his men killed. From the first scene of the disputed event it's obvious, "The RTO did it". It seems to me that the Vietnamese Govt. gave the producers permission to film on location only if they put in a lot of revisionist history sprinkled with some American apologist B.S. smothered in "Peace loving peoples of Vietnam". The only redeeming qualities of this film are the location shots and the relatively authentic period US military equipment.

This is a fairly morbid yet emotional war drama, starring Caper Van Dien and Carrie Otis. It is about a group of ex vietnam soldiers re-visiing aold battle gorunds years after the war. THye re-live memories of the war and remember things that they had tried to forget.

The film doesn't delve into the cliche bucket to many times as war films usually do and the script is fairly good. The actors perform well in some good roles but Casper Van Dien, who has the most important part, just cannot act. He almost ruins some emotional and effective scenes but is thankfully just rescued by some superior performance by people such as Jaimz Woolvett. The film is low budget but veteren director Sidney J Furie handles preceedings well, the guy definitely knows what he is doing. There are some good battle sequences, particularly in the last half. Overall this could have been better but it isn't bad, it is certainly better than some big budget stinkers like Windtalkers. 6/10