Little spoilers herein.
The second half of 'Hamburger Hill' exists out of a lot of soldiers going up hill 937, nicknamed Hamburger Hill, fighting against the Vietnamese all day only to go down the hill again. They never succeed in capturing it and then suddenly near the end of the film, when heroic music starts playing, they run up that hill and for some reason they do capture it. Maybe you would think I have spoiled the film for you but if you would think twice, realizing this is a patriotic American film, you understand I have not said anything you did not know already.
We follow a couple soldiers including Sgt. Frantz (Dylan McDermott), Doc Johnson (Courtney B. Vance), Washburn (Don Cheadle) and Languilli (Anthony Barrile), just to name a few, and we see the usual stuff in films like this. We have the heroic characters, the white people vs. black people scenes, the break-ups from girlfriends back home, the few men who are really losing it, and so on. Without showing a real enemy, only a few individuals that die gruesomely, we see these problems of the characters. Because we have seen this so many times and so much better before ('Apocalypse Now', 'Platoon' and 'Full Metal Jacket' are the best known examples) we never really care.
The film has some nice moments and I must admit it is not boring, although the second half is repeating the same things over and over again. If you do not think about those much better films, compare it to 'Tour of Duty' instead, you might enjoy it.
The second half of 'Hamburger Hill' exists out of a lot of soldiers going up hill 937, nicknamed Hamburger Hill, fighting against the Vietnamese all day only to go down the hill again. They never succeed in capturing it and then suddenly near the end of the film, when heroic music starts playing, they run up that hill and for some reason they do capture it. Maybe you would think I have spoiled the film for you but if you would think twice, realizing this is a patriotic American film, you understand I have not said anything you did not know already.
We follow a couple soldiers including Sgt. Frantz (Dylan McDermott), Doc Johnson (Courtney B. Vance), Washburn (Don Cheadle) and Languilli (Anthony Barrile), just to name a few, and we see the usual stuff in films like this. We have the heroic characters, the white people vs. black people scenes, the break-ups from girlfriends back home, the few men who are really losing it, and so on. Without showing a real enemy, only a few individuals that die gruesomely, we see these problems of the characters. Because we have seen this so many times and so much better before ('Apocalypse Now', 'Platoon' and 'Full Metal Jacket' are the best known examples) we never really care.
The film has some nice moments and I must admit it is not boring, although the second half is repeating the same things over and over again. If you do not think about those much better films, compare it to 'Tour of Duty' instead, you might enjoy it.