RATING: 3 out of 10.
VERDICT: War may be hell, but sitting through this is worse.

News flash just in: "Hollywood movie delivers message that war is hell." Deplorable macho bullshit from star Gibson and writer-director Randall Wallace, who was also responsible for scripting "Braveheart" and "Pearl Harbor" (which says it all really), "We Were Soldiers" attempts to tell the story behind what, in 1965, was one of the first major battles involving US troops in Vietnam. What should have been a tribute to the men involved in the conflict is actually a pointless, gore-fest that could only possibly appeal to cine-sadists who like to see humans blowing the living shit out of each other. Wallace’s cliché-ridden script does the story no favours whatsoever. "We’re coming back together… dead or alive," says Gibson’s Col. Hal Moore to his troops, somehow managing to deliver the line without smirking. Later, a soldier utters the immortal line, "Tell my wife I love her," with his dying breath. If only John Wayne were still alive today…

Stylistically, "We Were Soldiers" looks like a cheap tele-movie edited by a six-year-old. The names of Chris Klein and Marc Lucas pop up in the opening credits, immediately sending a shiver down this viewer’s spine. Fortunately, neither of them has a great deal to do here, so we are spared most of the pain of having to watch their miserable attempts at acting. Greg Kinnear plays a helicopter pilot and almost manages to pull it off. Sadly, any hope of the movie being taken seriously is destroyed every time Sam Elliot comes onscreen (playing what appears to be an animated piece of old boot leather) to deliver what would surely win the award for Most Ludicrously Comedic Performance In A Serious Drama if the Oscars had such a category.

Predictably, Mel gets to squirt a few a couple of times, showing us once again that he may be as tough as old boot leather (or Sam Elliot) but he still has feelings. Credit where it is due, the movie does have one truly moving sequence. Vastly underestimating the number of casualties expected during the conflict, the military resorts to having telegrams delivered to the dead soldiers’ relatives and loved ones by taxi drivers. After a shock visit to her own home by a lost cabbie, Moore’s wife Julie (Madeleine Stowe, criminally underused) compassionately takes on the task of delivering all future telegrams herself. If the rest of the movie had been half as good as this short interlude away from the mindless carnage "We Were Soldiers" may have been a movie worth writing home about.