RE: [Leica] MOVIE LEICA SIGHTING - 'We Were Soldiers"

["Tim Atherton" <tim@KairosPhoto.com>]

Here is a review by Dirck ("big hair") Halstead -  a great photographer, a
man who will always help you out if he can and UPI Saigon Photo Bureau Chief
at the time


tim a


> -----Original Message-----

> Subject: A Review of "We Were Soldiers"
>
>
> A Downholder's Review of "We Were Soldiers"
>
> The story of the battle of the Ia Drang Valley
>
> By Dirck Halstead (SGP)
>
> Washington, DC: Feb 28,2002:
>
> "We Were Soldiers", the Paramount version of  " We Were Soldiers,
> Once. And Young"  by Lt. Gen Harold G Moore (ret) and UPI's Joseph L.
> Galloway opened
> to an Army brass filled audience at the Uptown Theatre in Washington
> last night.
>
> The two hour twenty minute film recounts the struggle in November of
> 1965 between four companies of the newly-formed second regiment, 7th
> Cavalry (Airmobile) of the U.S. Army and the 66th Regiment of the
> People's Army of North Vietnam. It was the first time U.S. forces had
> joined in a battle with a main-force North Vietnamese Regiment. For
> three days, the U.S. troopers held out against an overwhelming force.
>
> On the first evening of the battle, a young UPI reporter, Joe
> Galloway, joined Lt. Col. Harold Moore at his Command Post in the
> center of the battle.  For the next 48 hours, Galloway would
> alternate between shooting pictures and firing his M16 in a furious
> battle for survival.
>
> The film, directed and written by Randall Wallace is true in both
> word and spirit to Galloway and Moore's book.
>
> To watch, the film is exhausting. For most of the running time, the
> viewer is subjected to never-ending rushes of North Vietnamese troops
> into the camera, as casualties vividly mount on the American side.
> Wallace wisely chose to cut between the heaviest fighting to scenes
> of the wives of the troopers receiving telegrams of  the cost of the
> battle
> Back in Ft. Benning. These scenes help to ground the film.
>
> Virtually every word uttered by the troopers in the battle was taken
> from the book.
>
> To the moviegoer who was too young to remember the Vietnam War, and
> especially this battle, there will be a temptation to think that this
> is "just another Hollywood War movie, with Mel Gibson as Col. Moore
> wading into
> hordes of enemy soldiers. However, I was sitting next to an Army
> General who had taken part in the real battle, and he was spellbound.
> When I asked him at the end how he liked it, he said "it was
> outstanding! It's the first time the movies have gotten a battle
> right."
>
> At one point , actor Barry Pepper, as the young Galloway is stretched
> out on the ground as enemy fire whips around him. Suddenly  Sgt Major
> Basil Plumley, played in an Academy Award-winning turn by veteran Sam
> Elliott, towers over him, and says "you can't take no pictures laying
> face down on the ground, Sonny!"
>
> Some of those pictures Galloway took are used in the film.
>
> In the three days of battle, the troopers of the 7th Cavalry killed
> by body count  some 1,215 North Vietnamese troops, and captured six.
>
> On the American side, 79 were killed, and 121 wounded and missing.
>
> The North Vietnamese had lost their first battle of the war. In a
> bitter sweet moment, the NVA commander, Col. Nguyen Huu An, portrayed
> by Don Duong,
> muses as he removes his dead from the battlefield,  "what a tragedy !
> The Americans have won this battle, now they will feel they can the
> win the war. In the end it will be the same, but so many will die."
>
> Tech credits are superb. Despite the fact that the movie was
> entirely shot in
> Georgia and California, Director of Photography Dean Semler captures
> the feeling of the place and the soldiers on both sides who fought
> the battle, and a young UPI reporter who witnessed it.
>
>
> Dirck Halstead was the UPI photo bureau chief in Saigon from
> 1965-1966. He is now the Editor and Publisher of The Digital
> Journalist at http://digitaljournalist.org
>
>
> To view Henri Huet's photographs from  the Ia Drang, go to
> http://dirckhalstead.org/issue9711/req19.htm
>
> --


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