Another Website ("Historical Inaccuracies in Film") points out the same thing, that the final battle scene with Lt. Col. Moore leading the brave charge at the North Vietnamese headquarters did not take place in reality or in the book. There was no helicopter coming to the aid of Moore's assault. In fact the 7th Air Cavalry division was given an airlift out of the area and the next day a different division was brought in fresh and that division was ambushed.
In the Website "Movie Mistakes" a number of small but nonetheless significant inaccuracies are pointed out. In the film Lt. Col. Moore fires his rifle many times; he is shooting at North Vietnamese (NVA) soldiers near the command post that had been set up by the Americans. However, in the book Moore does not fire his weapon and there were no NVA tools within the command post area.
A couple helicopter pilots (characters "Snake" and "Too Tall") are seen in the film piloting their crafts from the right seat in the helicopter. However, "Movie Mistakes" points out correctly that helicopters are piloted from the left seat. It can't be accurate to depict a soldier burned in a large part of his body from napalm; in the film the reporter finds Jimmy burned on the ground but his clothes are not burned and the grass around him is not singed. This can't be how it really was in the war, and of course the film's director Wallace did the best he could given the tools at hand.
Was the Movie Effective? Did it Broaden an Understanding of the War?
Yes the movie was very effective and well done. It was clearly more effective than "Full Metal Jacket," "Platoon" -- and "Green Berets"...
In fact, the reviewer seemed to make it clear that this film would provide insight even for people well-familiar with the comfort women story. Three survivors talk about what they endured as comfort women, and how that has continued to impact them and their lives, to this day. The reviewer describes the women using graphic detail, which is an interesting and anomalous phrase. After all, would not one expect
In addition, the producers and writers took some situations and dramatized them to make the film more meaningful and memorable. The whipping scene is one of those situations. Whipping was banned in the Army, and Shaw does not seem like the kind of person that would use that punishment, anyway. However, it showed how blacks were treated by their owners at the time, and it helped add drama to
Raid provides valuable insight into the war that was occurring in the Pacific during World War II. Too often, the conflict in the Pacific is overlooked and emphasis is placed on the conflict in Europe. While it is an integral part of American history, the conflict between the United States and Japan focuses on the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and
He was twenty-five when he died." ("Wilfred Own," 2005) One figure, however, besides the more aristocratic poets, who is entirely fictional is a working class man named Billy Prior, a who had risen through the ranks to become an officer, but is now mute. This character is used, not for historical accuracy, but as a symbolic state of the working class during this period, and as a contrast to the
American History Through Film It is often agreed upon that there are different categories of history: the history that happened, the history created by historians and the history that people believe. Since the early 1920s, the American film industry has attempted to recreate history using films and television programs that aim to pass specific messages to viewers. War is often a fascinating subject for most filmmakers as it gives them an
Forrester Sometimes it seems that the last person to come up with an original dramatic idea was William Shakespeare - and we all know that he borrowed most of his ideas from other people too. So we should not expect to see much that is new in a story that is a retelling of Shakespeare's "Othello" - which is what Tim Blake Nelson's film "O" is. The film, which is
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