The Green Berets (1968)

John Wayne's gung-ho Vietnam War film has long been the subject of ridicule and it would be fair to say that, in hindsight, it becomes obvious that the Duke did not have the most comprehensive grasp of the historical issues involved in the war. Yet, viewed strictly as the kind of standard war movie that Wayne had churned out by the dozen in his career, it's reasonably well made. He stars as a Green Beret colonel who takes a reporter skeptical about the war (David Janssen) with him on a mission to capture an enemy general, hoping to convince the man, and, by extension, the American population, why we should be in Vietnam. Aside from the laughable script, which is little more than an elaboration of the kind of knee-jerk anti-communist rhetoric than Wayne had been spouting in his public appearances around the country during the period, the film has some effective battle scenes, and the cast does a credible job with notable work by Janssen and St. Jacques. Some commentators have expressed surprise that a film about such an agonizing and unpopular war could do as well at the box office as it did. It is worth remembering that Wayne had been for years the most popular star in American films, and remained so as late as 1995, 16 years after his death. As author Garry Wills has observed, he was the symbol of the United States in combat, despite never having fought in any war. Historians have pointed out that in Vietnam, the kind of heroics Wayne enacted in his films proved fatal in practice, and his name became a joke among the troops, synonymous with such stupidly suicidal action. To put The Green Berets in context, one might see it on a double bill with Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986), a film made by a director who had fought in Vietnam. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide