The men of Bravo Company are facing a battle that's all uphill… up Hamburger Hill. Fourteen war-weary soldiers are battling for a mud-covered mound of earth so named because it chews up soldiers...
WHAT I LIKED: Of all the Vietnam war movies out there, 'Hamburger Hill' is probably the one which paints its brushstrokes broadest, as it attempts to deliver a grounded, gritty portrayal of life and tactics on the front-lines, as well as an exploration of the political culture surrounding the war and its psychological affects on those involved. Indeed whilst the famous trio (Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon) are all arguably concerned mostly with the very latter of those things, James Carabatsos' script is fairly all-encompassing, and with recent war-documentary filmmaker John Irvin at the helm, the movie almost winds up feeling rather like a documentary as a result.
In some essence though that's a good thing, as it means you get a very accessible understanding of the overall situation that doesn't feel remotely contrived to prove any kind of thematic point. The characters have conversations about the range of things you might imagine - from the mundane, to their loved-ones back home and the ongoing anti-war movement in America, and Irvin's camera simply sits back and frames that whilst his scenes play out. There's not a whole lot of character development or focus on individual's psyche (in fact the camera rarely cuts to close-up at all) but the fairly naturalistic performances mean you do care about the unit as a whole. Then of course you've got the moments of battle which fuel those topical conversations as soldiers experience terrible loss and genuine horror, and that works well because Irvin and his team deliver a very grounded depiction of the chaotic warzone. There are also discussions of battle tactics in the script and exchanges fuelled by racial tension as soldiers become more and more war-weary, and in the end this far-reaching approach and its script make for a very well-realised, quasi-documentary portrait of Vietnam.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: That overall gritty realism and vaguely naturalistic style may have worked even better had the script's dialogue not been so clunky, as the mechanics of trying to deal with so many subjects often show themselves pretty clearly here. Also, it's hard to argue that Hamburger Hill is up there with the best of the Vietnam war movies simply because it doesn't have that honed and refined thematic (and emotionally-impactive) vision of some others.
VERDICT: A film that deals with a lot of subject-matter surrounding the Vietnam war by getting soldiers to sit and talk about those things between battles, 'Hamburger Hill,' has a very grounded documentary feel to it, and that's both a good and bad thing.
