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| An apocalyptic painting of the hell of the Vietnam War adorns this gung-ho poster for Ray Kellogg, John Wayne and Mervyn LeRoy's The Green Berets |
A Vietnam War-skeptical, liberal newspaperman heads out with new green berets (US Special Forces) to Vietnam to fight the unprincipled, Communist Vietcong madmen.
The Green Berets is written by James Lee Barrett (Fool's Parade (1971)), based on the same-titled 1965 novel by Robin Moore (The London Switch (1974)), and directed by Ray Kellogg (The Killer Shrews (1959)), Californian master filmmaker though uncredited here, Mervyn LeRoy (No Place to Go (1927)) and co-director/co-star John Wayne (Blood Alley (1955)). Wayne helped the film to creation due to his worries over the rampant anti-war sentiments of the time and his wish to present his own staunch pro-military stance to the public.
How far one's own political nerves can take of Duke's (Wayne's) highly creative positive spin on the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese people and the US troops is an individual circumstance, but in any case The Green Berets is regrettably a thoroughly empty and dull film, so that finally there's not much more to it than its more or less offensively made-up, clean, orderly and neat world views and some bizarre scenes: Like the one in which a soldier lets the ever-happy Vietnamese boy orphan in the army camp share his bed ...
George Takei (You Don't Mess With the Zohan (2008)) is a merciless anti-VC Vietnamese local hero. There's also macho bravado war comical bits that are as misplaced as they are unfunny. The film is mostly shot in Georgia, which naturally enough looks far from the Asian country of the actual plot. And, just to be clear, Wayne, otherwise a hero of mine, puts his foot squarely in it here. - The Green Berets is a real stinker.
Related posts:
Ray Kellogg: The Giant Gila Monster (1959) - Sullivan shines in Kellogg's low-tech Texas drive-in classic
John Wayne: Cahill U.S. Marshall/Cahill (1973) - John Wayne upholds the law in exciting late-career western (star)
The Cowboys (1972) or, John Wayne and the Cowboys (star)
Chisum (1970) - Middle-of-the-road John Wayne action-western (star)
El Dorado (1966) - Hawks, Duke and Mitchum's great western (co-star)
Circus World/The Magnificent Showman (1964) - Hathaway and Bronston's grand, ill-fated curio (co-star)
The Conqueror (1956) - John Wayne's inauspicious turn as Genghis Khan (co-star)
Flying Leathernecks (1951) - Ray's gung ho, Technicolor aviation spectacle (co-star)
Fort Apache (1948) - Wayne and Fonda clash in Ford's solid western of a massacre of Indians (co-star)
Back to Bataan (1945) - Wayne in the Pacific (star)
Watch a 5-minute clip from the film here
Cost: 7 mil. $
Box office: 8.7 mil. $ (North-American rentals alone)
= Uncertain
[The Green Berets premiered 19 June (New York) and runs 142 minutes. Wayne visited South Vietnam in 1966 and decided to do a film in support of the Army special forces. He turned down a part in The Dirty Dozen (1967) to do Green Berets. Wayne bought out Moore's involvement in the production with 35k $ and 5 % of undefined profits from the film. The script was developed with the US Army, who had objections and ideas for molding it. Shooting took place in Alabama, Georgia, California and Florida from August - December 1967 with extensive cooperation with the Department of Defense providing air crafts, uniforms and consultancy. Wayne rejoiced as the public braved anti-war picketing at theaters and paid admissions to take the film in the black within 3 months, as it earned 8.7 mil. in North-American rentals despite also getting critically destroyed. Roger Ebert gave it a zero/4 star review, translating to a notch under than this one. The foreign gross numbers are regrettably unknown. Kellogg retired from directing and only returned as an associate producer on a single TV movie five years later; LeRoy retired after his work on the film; and Wayne directed again, albeit uncredited, in Big Jake (1971). As an actor he returned in Hellfighters (1968); David Janssen (Ring of Fire (1961)) in The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968); and Jim Hutton (Where the Boys Are (1960)) in Hellfighters (1968). The Green Berets is rotten at 23 % with a 4.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Green Berets?
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