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| Source: Wikipedia |
Just in case you needed a reminder.
In case you need another, watch these moderately likeable schmucks from a quiet Pennsylvania steel town go about their lives, then go into the service and ruin those lives on the other side of the world.
At the outset, grubby foundry workers wash up, dress up for a buddy's extravagant Russian Orthodox wedding. They drink, dance, hit on bridesmaids, hit their wives. The buddies resolve to venture forth on one last deer hunting expedition before ... well, before Nam. (A Green Beret, drinking alone, eloquently summarizes his war experience: "Fuck it.") They do so, and soon wish they'd planned the excursion better. Just like President Johnson's war policy.
So, Nam. Midway through, a completely different movie starts. Right away, they're prisoners of war. Playing Russian roulette to amuse their captors. (Note for posterity: generally unwise to hand the captured enemy a loaded gun.) Brutality ensues.
The band of buddies splinters. To the Army hospital, to the Saigon slums, even back to Pennsylvania minus two legs and joy of life. There's difficulty reconnecting with painfully awkward civilian friends, because they've become different people. The boys can't go deer hunting again, like old times. Can't hardly construct a simple sentence once PTSD acts up. Can't find peace except with a bullet in the noggin. Can't even accept amorous advances from an absent friend's lonely wife. (At first. Infidelity finds a way.)
One of the boys, missing in action, stays in Saigon, playing Russian roulette for the big bucks. Time transforms him into a mute death-seeker. Not that it stops our grim battered hero from going back in there to save him.
And in case no other single element was subtle enough, behold. An anemic rendition of "God Bless America," sung over a gloomy military funeral dinner.
We get it, guys. Vietnam sucked.
183 minutes.
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