The Green Berets (film)
The Green Berets | |
---|---|
Directed by | |
Screenplay by | James Lee Barrett |
Based on | The Green Berets 1965 novel by Robin Moore |
Produced by | Michael Wayne |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Winton C. Hoch |
Edited by | Otho Lovering |
Music by | Miklós Rózsa |
Color process | Technicolor |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Warner Bros.-Seven Arts |
Release date |
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Running time | 142 minutes |
Country | United States |
Languages |
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Budget | $7 million |
Box office | $32 million[1] |
The Green Berets is a 1968 American war film directed by John Wayne and Ray Kellogg, and starring Wayne, David Janssen and Jim Hutton, based on the 1965 novel by Robin Moore. Much of the film was shot in the summer of 1967. Parts of the screenplay bear little relation to the novel, although the portion in which a woman seduces a North Vietnamese communist general and sets him up to be kidnapped by Americans is from the book.
The Green Berets is strongly
The film was a financial success at the box office, but received almost universally negative reviews from critics.[3][4]
Plot
Reporter George Beckworth attends a
Meanwhile, Kirby is assigned to assist the South Vietnamese forces. As he prepares to depart, he catches Sgt. Petersen appropriating supplies, but decides to utilise his skills on his team. Arriving in South Vietnam, they meet Beckworth, whom Kirby allows to accompany them to their camp. Despite signs of humanitarian work, he remains unconvinced of the need to be in Vietnam.
At the camp, they meet a young war-orphan, Ham Chuck, whose family was slaughtered. Ham Chuck, along with his dog Jamoke, takes a liking to Sgt. Petersen. Petersen takes him in as if he were his own son.
Following an enemy attack, Sergeant Muldoon notices a South Vietnamese soldier acting suspiciously and knocks him out, allowing Nghiem to interrogate him. After Beckworth sees Nghiem torture a confession from the soldier, he confronts Kirby, who justifies the act by telling Beckworth that their enemies are ruthless killers who deserve no legal protections of any sort in this new kind of war.
A few days later, while accompanying Kirby and his team on a patrol in the nearby mountains, Beckworth finds that the family of a village chief he had befriended earlier have been tortured and executed by the Viet Cong for cooperating with the Americans.
The next night, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops launch a massive attack on the camp, and Beckworth is forced to fight alongside the Green Berets; he also helps move villagers into the camp to protect them from the crossfire.
Eventually, enemy sappers breach the perimeter by blowing openings in the barbed wire fences around the camp, and the Green Berets and South Vietnamese are forced to fall back to the inner perimeter. Nghiem sets off hidden explosives which kill the spies, but soon dies afterwards after being hit by a mortar.
Due to the intense attack, Kirby orders a retreat from the camp, and U.S. helicopters arrive to evacuate the refugees. Petersen puts Ham Chuck on one and promises to return for him in
Beckworth tells Kirby he will file a story supporting U.S. involvement in the war and returns to Da Nang. Back at headquarters, Kirby meets with his superior, Colonel Morgan, and his South Vietnamese counterpart, Colonel Cai. They tell him about a top secret mission to capture North Vietnamese General Pha Son Ti, allowing them to end the war on South Vietnamese terms, as well as disrupting enemy leadership. Colonel Cai uses his sister-in-law Lin, a fashion model, as a honey trap to lure General Ti to a former French colonial mansion in a well-guarded valley in North Vietnam.
Among those Cai selects (and accompanies) are Kirby, Muldoon, and Petersen. Muldoon, Doc McGee, and two of Cai's men stay behind at a bridge over a river to set explosives to blow it up to stop pursuit by the enemy forces, while Kirby and the rest of the team head towards the plantation. After eliminating the plantation's guards, the group subdue Ti with Lin's help, and put him in the trunk of his car. Kirby, Cai, Petersen, Watson, and Lin drive away, but the rest of the team is killed by the guards while attempting to escape.
At dawn, the survivors cross the bridge; it is destroyed, but McGee is seriously wounded as he and Muldoon escape, while the others airlift Ti out of the area by a Skyhook device. While Kirby and the team advance through the jungle to their extraction point, Petersen is killed by a booby-trap, and the others are forced to leave his body behind.
At Da Nang, Beckworth watches as Ham Chuck runs from helicopter to helicopter, desperately searching for Petersen. Eventually, Kirby tells him of Petersen's death and comforts him, before the two walk along the beach into the sunset.
Cast
- John Wayne as Col. Mike Kirby
- David Janssen as George Beckworth
- Jim Hutton as Sgt. Petersen
- Aldo Ray as Sgt. Muldoon
- Raymond St. Jacques as Sgt. Doc McGee
- Bruce Cabot as Col. Morgan
- Jack Soo as Col. Cai
- George Takei as Capt. Nghiem
- Patrick Wayne as Lt. Jamison
- Luke Askew as Sgt. Provo
- Irene Tsu as Lin
- Edward Faulkner as Capt. MacDaniel
- Jason Evers as Capt. Coleman
- Mike Henry as Sgt. Kowalski
- Craig Jue as Hamchuck
- Chuck Roberson as Sgt. Griffin
- Eddy Donno as Sgt. Watson
- Richard "Cactus" Pryor as Collier[5]
The film was notable in its casting of George Takei, who was then a regular character on the series Star Trek. As a result of Takei joining the film's cast, he missed filming nearly a third of the episodes of Star Trek season 2. His lines were subsequently rewritten for the character of Pavel Chekov, played by actor Walter Koenig. Keonig, who was originally cast as a rarely speaking background character, grew into one of the major Star Trek leads due to Takei's absence, leading to Chekov becoming a regular character in both the original series and subsequent films.[6]
Production
Pre-production
The final film's origins began in June 1966 with a trip by John Wayne to South Vietnam, and his subsequent decision to produce a film about the Army special forces deployed there as a tribute to them.[9] Wayne was a steadfast supporter of American involvement in the war in Vietnam. He co-directed the film, and turned down the "Major Reisman" role in The Dirty Dozen to do so.
Screenplay
Although The Green Berets portrays the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army as sadistic tyrants, it also depicts them as a capable and highly motivated enemy. The film shows the war as one with no
The US Army had objections to James Lee Barrett's initial script. The first was that the Army wanted to show that South Vietnamese soldiers were involved in defending the base camp. That was rectified. The Army also objected to the portrayal of the raid where they kidnap a NVA general because in the original script this involved crossing the border into North Vietnam.[10] Robin Moore has stated that while all of the other stories in his book are roman à clefs of actual Special Forces missions and incidents, the mission to capture General Ti was completely fictitious.[11]
Wayne wished the screenplay to have more development of the characters, but Warner Bros. made it clear they wanted more action and less talk, as The Alamo was heavily criticized for having too much dialogue. Scenes shot with Vera Miles as the wife of Wayne's character were jettisoned. (However, Miles was again cast as the Duke's wife in Wayne's next film Hellfighters).[12]
Filming
Much of the film was shot in the summer of 1967 (before the
John F. Schultz played pivotal roles as an extra as a U.S. soldier and a North Vietnamese Regular. He said of John Wayne, "At lunch, the producers were going to feed us peons hamburgers and hotdogs while the main characters ate steak. John Wayne said '...we all get steak or nobody does.'
Colonel Lamar Asbury "Bill" Welch, the actual commander of the United States Army Airborne School at Fort Benning in 1967, makes a brief cameo Skeet Shooting with John Wayne. Welch wears a 1960s US Army Fatigue Baseball Cap (common issue during the Vietnam War) in the scene while the actors wear green berets. Soldiers exercising on the drill field – that Wayne shouts to – were actual Army airborne recruits in training.[9]
The film's large set-piece battle is loosely based on the
Music
The original choice for scoring the film,
Reception
Critical reception
Upon its cinema release, movie critic Roger Ebert gave it zero stars and cited extensive use of cliches, depicting the war in terms of "cowboys and Indians", and being a "heavy-handed, remarkably old-fashioned film."[3] It is on his "Most Hated" list. His then-rival at the Chicago Tribune, Clifford Terry, described the film as "both predictable and tedious" and added that its "most fatal mistake" was "presenting the United States' most complex war in the simplest of terms."[15]
The San Francisco Examiner's critic, Stanley Eichelbaum, observed the film thus:
John Wayne—bless him—has convinced me he's more of a patriot than he thinks. His movie, The Green Berets, which opened yesterday at the St. Francis, Coliseum, El Rey and Geneva Drive-In, will without question unite the doves and the hawks. It is the first film about Vietnam about which there can be no controversy, no dispute, no argument. Nobody who sees it will find a single reason to disagree that it is the phoniest, most laughable war picture in many years.[16]
Reviewing for The New York Times, Renata Adler wrote, "The Green Berets is a film so unspeakable, so stupid, so rotten and false in every detail that it passes through being fun, through being funny, through being camp, through everything and becomes an invitation to grieve, not for our soldiers or for Vietnam (the film could not be more false or do a greater disservice to either of them), but for what has happened to the fantasy-making apparatus in this country."[4]
The screenplay for
Film commentator Emanuel Levy noted in his review that Wayne was not attempting to promote the cause of the Vietnam War as much as he was trying to portray the Special Forces in their unique role in the military: "Wayne said his motive was to glorify American soldiers as the finest fighting men 'without going into why we are there, or if they should be there.' His 'compulsion' to do the movie was based on his pride of the Special Forces, determined to show 'what a magnificent job this still little-known branch of service is doing.' ... 'I wasn't trying to send a message out to anybody,' he reasoned, 'or debating whether it is right or wrong for the United States to be in this war.'"
Levy also notes that Wayne acknowledged that war is generally not popular, but the soldiers who serve face the risks and dangers of combat nonetheless, and must be prepared to sacrifice themselves, regardless of their personal will or judgment. Levy quotes Wayne: "What war was ever popular for God's sake? Those men don't want to be in Vietnam any more than anyone else. Once you go over there, you won't be middle-of-the-road."[20]
The Green Berets holds a 23% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on thirteen reviews.[21]
Box office
Despite the poor reviews, and despite being protested and picketed in the United States and abroad,[22][23] it went on to be a commercial success, which Wayne attributed in part to the negative reviews from the press, which he saw as representing criticism of the war rather than the film.[24]
"The critics overkilled me, the picture and the war", said Wayne. "As a result, so many people went to see it that I had a cheque from the distributors for $8 million within three months. That's the cost of the picture, so we moved into profit the next day."[25] The Green Berets earned rentals of $8.7 million in North America during 1968.[26]
Accolades
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in the following:
- 2005: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
- Col. Mike Kirby: "Out here, due process is a bullet." — Nominated[27]
See also
- List of American films of 1968
- John Wayne filmography
- List of film director and actor collaborations
References
- ^ "The Green Berets, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Archived from the original on June 27, 2012. Retrieved May 23, 2012.
- ^ a b Moore, Robin Introduction to 1999 edition The Green Berets The Green Berets: The Amazing Story of the U.S. Army's Elite Special Forces Unit 2007 Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
- ^ a b Ebert, Roger (June 26, 1968). "The Green Berets". rogerebert.com. Archived from the original on April 28, 2013. Retrieved April 20, 2014.
- ^ a b Adler, Renata (June 20, 1968). "Screen: 'Green Berets' as Viewed by John Wayne: War Movie Arrives at the Warner Theater". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 3, 2018. Retrieved July 3, 2018.
- ^ "Westlake, TX News". Archived from the original on 2011-10-09. Retrieved 2013-04-04.
- ^ Stowe, D. (2023, January 11). The Reason Star Trek Added Chekov In TOS Season 2. Retrieved from ScreenRant.com: https://screenrant.com/star-trek-tos-chekov-reason-joined-season-2/
- ISBN 0-8131-2225-2.
- ^ George J(erome) W(aldo) Goodman Summary. Archived from the original on 2021-06-05. Retrieved 2011-06-21.
- ^ a b c "From "The Movemakers", The Making of the "Green Berets" (1968)". IMDb. Archived from the original on 2016-03-20. Retrieved 2018-06-29.
- ISBN 1-86105-722-9
- ^ Moore, Robin. The Green Berets (New York: Crown Publishing), 1965.
- ^ p. 293 Munn, Michael John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth Robson, 2004
- ^ "The Green Berets (1968)". Archived from the original on 2010-09-13. Retrieved 2010-03-16.
- ^ More Sonobeat Artists Archived 2009-09-03 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Terry, Clifford (1968-06-27). "A Complex War in Simple Terms". Chicago Tribune. p. 13, s. 2. Archived from the original on 2021-06-05. Retrieved 2019-11-04.
- ^ Eichelbaum, Stanley (1968-06-27). "All Can Agree on Wayne's War Film". San Francisco Examiner. p. 31.
- ^ Stone, Oliver (2001). Platoon DVD commentary (DVD). MGM Home Entertainment.
- ISBN 978-0060117825
- ^ Pilger, John. "Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire". Speech. Democracy Now. Archived from the original on 2013-07-28.
- ^ Levy, Emanuel (January 29, 2006). "Green Berets (1968): Vietnam War as Seen by John Wayne as Director and Star". emanuellevy.com. Archived from the original on December 6, 2017. Retrieved July 3, 2018.
- ^ "The Green Berets". Rotten Tomatoes.
- ^ The Combat Film – the death and rebirth of an American film tradition Archived 2018-07-30 at the Wayback Machine, page 45-47
- ^ New Approaches to Rhetoric, George N. Dionisopoulos, Chapter 8: John Wayne, the Green Berets, and the Containment Doctrine
- ^ "Wayne's 'Green Berets' Is A Big Money-Maker". The Miami News. 6 January 1969. p. 5-B. Archived from the original on 4 November 2019. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
- ^ "DUKE". Los Angeles Times. 25 January 1970. p. n6.
- ^ "Big Rental Films of 1968". Variety. 8 January 1969. p. 15. This figure is a rental accruing to distributors.
- ^ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes Nominees" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-03-13. Retrieved 2016-07-30.
External links
- The Green Berets at IMDb
- The Green Berets at the American Film Institute Catalog
- The Green Berets at the TCM Movie Database
- The Green Berets at AllMovie