One of the most violent movies ever released.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 29, 2010

We Were Soldiers is, ultimately, a powerful and moving experience--once it overcomes its clunky, badly written and cliched first act.

| Aug 18, 2008

Gibson wears a rictus of distaste which seems more suggestive of dodgy on-set catering than the horrors of combat.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2003

Probably the best thing you can say about We Were Soldiers is that it does justice to an awful conflict.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 20, 2002

The Vietnam setting looks authentic enough, but the action is as inert and unpersuasive as Gibson's attempt to fashion Bill Mauldin poetry out of his $20-million-plus smirk.

Full Review | Jun 1, 2002

Makes you cry for the hundreds of thousands of men and women who died so pointlessly with Geoghegan. And their orphans.

| Mar 22, 2002

As I settled into my World War II memories, I found myself strangely moved by even the corniest and most hackneyed contrivances.

| Mar 14, 2002

After suffering through We Were Soldiers, I think I've seen all the war movies I care to endure for quite some time.

Full Review | Mar 13, 2002

By comparison, Oliver Stone's Platoon plays like the experience of a sensibly outraged man worthy of our sympathy.

Full Review | Mar 5, 2002

The battle sequences in We Were Soldiers aren't quite as head-spinning as in Black Hawk Down -- but this film does a much better job of establishing the characters before they plunge into battle.

Full Review | Mar 4, 2002

Fails to bring as much to the table.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 3, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 2, 2002

... the first film in recent memory that a major studio has chosen to release early in the year with palpable filmmaking passion and production heft.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 1, 2002

Goes beyond the familiar.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2002

The story it tells is both forgotten and relevant, a neat trick.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2002

Even those stout hearts who managed to sit through the gore of Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down will likely find it difficult to watch scenes such as the one where a soldier's face is burned away by a phosphorus grenade.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 1, 2002

The film feels formulaic, its plot and pacing typical Hollywood war-movie stuff, while the performances elicit more of a sense of deja vu than awe.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 1, 2002

... one of the best war movies of the past 20 years.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 1, 2002

Mel Gibson fights the good fight in Vietnam in director Randall Wallace's flag-waving war flick with a core of decency.

| Mar 1, 2002

At its best, it's Black Hawk Down with more heart. At its worst, it's Rambo- meets-John Ford.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 1, 2002