MovieChat Forums > Hamburger Hill (1987) Discussion > Incredibly underrated

Incredibly underrated

posted 13 years ago by eagletony
6 replies | jump to latest

Shouldn't a war movie be largely judged based on realism? Why do so many directors feel the need to spice up their movies with their cool philosophical ideas and political views, or whatever? Isn't it enough to take some real situations and just put them on film, sort of in a documentary-like approach?

If a director takes a war, and just uses it as a sort of vehicle to tell their own story, in the worst case scenario you get a complete mess of a war movie like The Hurt Locker. The Hurt Locker, from what I've seen Iraq War veterans say and written is unrealistic to the point where it doesn't even resemble the reality of the War in Iraq, or... anything. It's like watching a bunch of unrealistic characters in unrealistic situations, doing unrealistic things that could probably never happen, so what's the point? Just so Kathryn Bigelow can tell us that war is a drug? Great. Also, those slow-motion explosions and those scenes where Jeremy Renner defies death just by being so cool--those were pretty rad, huh? If a movie about war wants to tell you that war is a drug at the expense of painting a realistic picture of it, then puts in a bad-ass character who just can't die because he's such a bad-ass, it has completely failed as a war movie in my humble opinion. The bottom line is, by misrepresenting reality, the movie just ends up promoting war for teenagers who love Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, with its cool action scenes and invincible bad-ass main character and etc.

I apologize for that long rant, and I'm not sure exactly how I ended up writing a whole paragraph bashing The Hurt Locker, but oh well.

What I think makes Hamburger Hill a great war movie is that it isn't committed to telling a story about anything other than the troops fighting a war and getting by each day. Even some of the more contrived moments I felt were done well, like the scenes where Beletsky listens to the tape from his wife, where Bienstock reads the letter from his girlfriend, and where Worcestor tells why he came back for a third tour. I felt these were all necessary scenes because many of them could be applied to any of the faceless US troops we never see, and they felt like realistic situations that could happen at times of such stress. I think many people consider how the movie isn't attached to any particular character a flaw, but I think that's actually a strength of the movie. The battles scenes feel so random, and it was always shocking to me when a character got injured or killed. Veterans say the battle scenes are incredibly realistic, so who am I to say different? The characters all mess around with each other and talk trash, and they all feel like real people. I can see that even if I never fought in Vietnam. It's like if you were walking by a close group of friends you've never seen before. The fact is, many people fought in Vietnam and died, and we'll never know who those people were, and Hamburger Hill somehow showed me what it was like, how it was just human beings doing things because that was the situation they happened to be in. It made me incredibly sad that we take for granted that human beings can do such cruel things to each other just because people higher up than us can tell us to (maybe a bit more complicated than that, but seems like the gist of it).

[–] MikePaul854 11 years ago

I actually think this is a much better movie than Platoon.

[–] tvcrazeddave 11 years ago

I loved this movie. It is definitely one of my most favourite of all time.

I have to agree that it is underrated and unappreciated. I personally only saw this movie because I became a big fan of Tour of Duty and the movie has the same feel like the TV show, in my opinion. Both are absolutely great in honouring the vets and their experiences.

[–] kmags84 10 years ago

This is MUCH better than Platoon. I can't stand Oliver Stone. He cant make a film without putting his Political BS all over it. When I watch a film, I generally don't want to be told how I "Should" feel... The realism in this out performs any sentiment by Stone

[–] kazm2000 10 years ago

Shouldn't a war movie be largely judged based on realism?

"

No. That's like saying paintings should portray reality only. Directors make movies for their own reasons. Should Apocalypse Now not have been made because not all of it was realistic?

That said this movie is underrated.

[–] activista 10 years ago

This is being shown on the MOVIES channel---it's actually a pretty good film which barely got any hype when it first came out----probably because virtually none of the cast were big names at the time (even though half of them went on to bigger and better things,like Vance, Cheadle,Boatman,Weber, and McDermoot (it's a trip to see just how young they were in this---apparently for a good number of the cast,this was their debut film. HAMBURGER HILL was on of the many Vietnam war films that came out after PLATOON---its lack of marquee names probably also caused it to get lost in the shuffle. I like how the film is a really good character piece, and not just a rip-off of PLATOON (which was also very good,BTW.) And yeah, it's very underrated.

[–] aaronsons1 9 years ago

I saw the film at the time of its release in the UK and it wasn't underrated back then - there was of course a whole movement of Vietnam set films back then even including a tv drama series "Tour of Duty" - and among all of those, "Hamburger Hill" was fully recognized as one of the defining movies of the genre.

Think over the years it has become a little 'forgotten' whereas the likes of "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket" have remained in the general consciousness. Watching it nowerdays it is for me perhaps one of the stronger of those late 1980s Vietnam films - I mean that in that it is grittier and more realistic in its style than say "Full Metal Jacket" which I feel shifts from glossy military drama into stylized Kubrick territory and even art-house from time to time, without regard for authentic sets or historic accuracy, or, say "Platoon" which is brilliant in its portrayal of character-driven drama but has the Hollywood touch in too many ways, which is fine but "Hamburger" was the opposite.

"Hamburger Hill" like all of the movies of the era had its own story to tell, and on that, I always felt the Vietnam films had to be judged individually rather than against one and other (Eg "Hamburger" told the story of a unit battling to take a fortified hill. "Platoon" tells the story of a lone personality learning to fit in with a family of men whilst on a military campaign).