The Green Berets (film)

The Green Berets
Theatrical release poster by Frank McCarthy
Directed by	John Wayne Ray Kellogg Mervyn LeRoy (uncredited)
Written by	James Lee Barrett Robin Moore (novel)
Produced by	Michael Wayne
Starring	John Wayne David Janssen Jim Hutton Aldo Ray George Takei Luke Askew Mike Henry
Cinematography	Winton C. Hoch
Edited by	Otho Lovering
Music by	Miklós Rózsa (as Miklos Rozsa)
Distributed by	Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Release date	July 4, 1968
Running time	141 min.
Country	United States
Languages	English Vietnamese
Budget	$7,000,000

The Green Berets is a 1968 film featuring John Wayne, David Janssen, Jim Hutton, Aldo Ray, and George Takei, nominally based on the eponymous 1965 book by Robin Moore, though the screenplay has little relation to the book. Unlike most war films, the movie polarised public opinion to this day.

Thematically, The Green Berets is strongly anti-communist and pro-Saigon. It was produced in 1968, at the height of American involvement in the Vietnam War, the same year as the Tet offensive against the largest cities in South Vietnam. John Wayne was prompted by the anti-war atmosphere and social discontent in the U.S. to make this film in countering that. He requested and obtained full military co-operation and matériel from President Johnson.

Columbia Pictures, (who had bought the book's pre-publication film rights) was not able to produce a script that was approved by the Army whilst producer David L. Wolper, who also tried to buy the same rights, could not obtain finance for filming.

John Wayne had always been a steadfast supporter of American involvement in the war in Vietnam. He had entertained the soldiers in Vietnam, and wanted The Green Berets to be a tribute to them. He co-directed the film, and turned down the "Major Reisman" role in The Dirty Dozen to do so. The film's first scene illustrates that contention when Green Beret tour guides at Fort Benning, Georgia, show civilian visitors to the U.S. Infantry School the Soviet- and Chinese-made weapons issued to the soldiers and guerillas of the communist NVA and VC.

Plot

At Fort Bragg, newspaper reporter George Beckworth (David Janssen) is at a Special Forces briefing about the American military involvement in the war in Vietnam. The briefing (at Gabriel Demonstration Area, named for SGT Jimmy Gabriel, first SF soldier killed in Vietnam) includes a demonstration and explanation of the whys and wherefores of participating in that Asian war.

Skeptical civilians and journalists are told that multinational Communism is what the U.S. will be fighting in Vietnam; proof: weapons and equipment, captured from North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerrillas, originating in the Soviet Union, Communist Czechoslovakia, and Communist China. Despite that, Beckworth remains skeptical about the value of intervening in Vietnam's civil war. When asked by Green Beret Colonel Mike Kirby (John Wayne) if he had ever been to Vietnam, reporter Beckworth replies that he had not, but then accepts the soldier's challenge, and agrees to go and bear witness.

Colonel Kirby is posted to South Vietnam with two handpicked A-Teams of Special Forces troopers. One A-Team is to replace a team at a basecamp working with South Vietnamese and Montagnard soldiers whilst the other A-Team is to form a counter guerilla Mike force.

Arriving In South Vietnam, they meet Beckworth who Kirby allows to join them at the basecamp where he witnesses the humanitarian aspect (irrigation ditches, bandages, candy for children) of the Special Forces mission. Still, he remains skeptical of the U.S.'s need to be there. He changes his mind after a ferocious North Vietnamese Army attack upon the SF camp, admitting he probably will be fired from the newspaper for filing a story supporting the American war.

After that battle, Beckworth temporarily disappears from the story, while Col. Mike Kirby leads a team of Green Berets, Montagnards (Degar), and ARVN soldiers on a top-secret kidnap mission capturing a very important NVA field commander, who lives, eats, and drinks very well, in a guarded mansion, while the common people go hungry, cold, and naked. Kirby's ARVN counterpart Colonel Cai uses his sister in law as a honey trap bait for the General. The raid is successful with the captured General airlifted out of the area by a Skyhook device but at a high cost to the patrol.

Near the end of the story, Beckworth is seen with a Vietnamese boy named Hamchunk awaiting the return of the helicopters carrying the survivors of the raid.

Cast

• John Wayne - Col. Mike Kirby
• David Janssen - George Beckworth
• Jim Hutton - Sgt. Petersen
• Aldo Ray - MSgt. Muldoon
• Raymond St. Jacques - Sgt. "Doc" McGee
• Bruce Cabot - Col. Morgan
• Jack Soo - Col. Cai
• George Takei - Capt. Nim
• Patrick Wayne - Lt. Jamison
• Luke Askew - Sgt. Provo
• Irene Tsu - Lin
• Edward Faulkner - Capt. MacDaniel
• Jason Evers - Capt. Coleman
• Mike Henry - Sgt. Kowalski

Realism

Although the film portrays the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army as sadistic tyrants, it does, however, show them as a capable and willing enemy. The film also shows that unlike America's previous experience in foreign wars, this one had no front lines, meaning that the enemy can show up and attack at almost any position, anywhere. The film also shows the sophisticated spy ring of the VC and NVA that provided information about their adversaries. Like A Yank in Viet-Nam it is one of the rare films to give a positive view of the South Vietnamese military forces.

The US Army objected to James Lee Barrett's initial script in several ways. The first was that the Army wanted to show the South Vietnamese soldiers defending the base camp assault that was rectified. Secondly the Army objected to the raid with the mission of kidnapping a General that originally took place in North Vietnam.

Glorification of the war

The film is criticized for glorifying the Vietnam War and, in 2005, Chicago newspaper movie critic Roger Ebert enumerated it in his list of most-hated films for being a "heavy-handed, remarkably old-fashioned film."

Technical errors

Four commonly-cited technical mistakes are (i) the sun setting in the wrong horizon, (ii) the pine tree forests, (iii) the communist enemy's incorrect weapons, and (iv) all the actors were too old.

• The film closes with the sun setting into the sea by Da Nang at the end of a long day. Critics frequently mention this, because the coastline in Vietnam is on the east, while the sun sets in the west. (Although there is nothing to indicate that this scene does not occur in the morning.) The scene was filmed near Fort Benning, Georgia.

• The story occurs in southern Vietnam with numerous scenes in the film are shot around stands of pine trees, yet parts of Vietnam in the Central Highlands do have pine forests.

• It has been argued that the film errors in depicting the Viet Cong guerrillas and NVA soldiers having a surprising lack of automatic weapons as well as carrying weapons of mostly American and British origin. (Note: nearly all of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers in the movie are armed with single-shot rifles and almost no automatic or semi-automatic rifles). In fact, however, this is not completely implausible: Great Britain and the United States had provided large quantities of weapons both to the anti-Japanese Viet guerillas and to the Chinese during World War II, and the Chinese in turn exported many of these to the NVA and Vietcong. At the time in the late 1960s, few modern Russian and Chinese assault rifles, i.e. the AK-47, were available to Hollywood studios or to prop rental companies for use in motion pictures, and the book is set in 1963.

• All the actors were too old for their parts. John Wayne was 60 when the film was made, much older than any special forces colonel would have been, though many Hollywood actors have been older than the military roles they have played.

Music

The original choice for scoring the film, Elmer Bernstein who was a friend and frequent collaborator with John Wayne turned the assignment down due to his political beliefs. As a second choice, the producers contacted Miklós Rózsa then in Rome. When asked to do The Green Berets for John Wayne, Rózsa replied "I don't do Westerns". Rozsa was told "It's not a Western, it's an 'Eastern'". As a title song, the producers used a Ken Darby choral arrangement of Barry Sadler's hit song Ballad of the Green Berets. Rozsa provided a strong and varied musical score including a night club vocal by a Vietnamese singer Bạch Yến however bits of Onward Christian Soldiers were deleted from the final film.

Production notes

• As the movie was made with the full co-operation of the US military, the filmmakers had access to authentic firearms.
• In a climactic scene in which Wayne was scripted to break an M16 rifle against a tree, rather than break a real gun, he used a plastic toy replica "M-16 Marauder", made by Mattel, as a substitute.
• Toward the end of the movie, when John Wayne's character meets Jack Soo's character, you can see traffic on a highway going by in the distance through the trees, including a bus.
• The defensive battle that begins the second half of the movie is very loosely based on the Battle of Nam Dong, during which two Viet Cong battalions attacked a small outpost defended by a mixed force of Americans, Australians and South Vietnamese. After the successful defense of the outpost, the commanding officer, CPT Roger Donlon was awarded the Medal of Honor.
• The Wilhelm scream, a famous stock sound effect, is used four times throughout the siege on the fort.
• Comedian Richard Pryor is often credited with a small role in this film, and author Gilbert Adair even went so far as to point out Pryor's presence as an example of the under-representation of African-Americans in the film. In reality, however, the Richard Pryor in this movie is Texas newspaper columnist Richard 'Cactus' Pryor, a friend of Wayne's and a white man.
• This film is often identified as the "only film made about the Vietnam War during the Vietnam War" or as the "only pro-war movie made during the Vietnam War", but it is neither. At least two arguably pro-war films were made during the Vietnam War concerning American forces in Vietnam: A Yank in Viet-Nam (1964) (which was actually filmed in Vietnam) and To the Shores of Hell (1966).
• The character Col. Mike Kirby is based on the real life person Lauri Törni, who later on called himself Larry Thorne. Lauri Törni was a Finnish Army captain who fought in the Winter War (1939-40) and Continuation War (1941-44) against the Soviet Union. In 1954 he joined the US Army, and in November 1963 he joined the Special Forces unit A-734 in Vietnam and fought in the Mekong Delta. He disappeared during a mission in 1965 and was presumed dead. Larry Thorne's remains were found in 1999 and formally identified in 2003.
• The film's most famous line is "Out here, due process is with a bullet!" spoken by Wayne.

External links

• The Green Berets at IMDb
• The Green Berets at the TCM Movie Database
• The Green Berets at AllMovie
• Viet Nam War dot com review
• Roger Ebert's Review
• Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz