Warner Bros. | 1968 | 141 mins. | Rated G
A steadfast supporter of the war in Vietnam, John Wayne sought, and received, the support of the Johnson Administration for the making of 1968’s The Green Berets. Wayne had spent time in Vietnam entertaining the troops there, and made the film as a tribute to them. Despite full U.S. government support that allowed Wayne and the other actors to use authentic weapons—such as a US-marked M16—reviews at the time were universally damning. In a June 20, 1968 review Renata Adler wrote in The New York Times, “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 fantasymaking apparatus in this country.”
I hadn’t seen The Green Berets before I received the Blu-ray, and with politics aside, and forty years of hindsight, it’s just not a very good film. The movie begins with “The Ballad of the Green Berets” playing behind the opening titles, a number-one-hit in 1966, the song was written by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler who co-wrote the song with Robin Moore, the latter also having written the book upon which screenwriter James Lee Barrett based his film. John Wayne co-directed the film with Ray Kellogg, marking only his second stint behind the camera (the other was The Alamo in 1960).
Things begin at the John F. Kennedy Center for Special Warfare, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as a group of journalists are given the opportunity to question a team of military officers about the war in Vietnam. The reporters are stubborn, and childish, none more so than George Beckworth (David Janssen), a cocky, self-assured skeptic. Wayne plays Col. Mike Kirby, a gung-ho military man about to take over a company of Green Berets. Not one, to back down, Kirby offers the skeptical Beckwith an opportunity he can’t refuse: investigate the war firsthand by following him and a hand-selected platoon of soldiers to Southeast Asia.
Kirby’s men join forces with several South Vietnamese ARVN soldiers to provide humanitarian relief to civilians, fend off advancing troops, and kidnap a high-ranking enemy commander. Kirby and his men are faced with a number of obstacles, shedding their own blood in the battlefields of Vietnam to overcome each one, and Beckworth has an inevitable change of heart that forces him to rethink everything he thought about the war. You didn’t think Wayne wasn’t going to convert the guy did you?
While some of the battle scenes appear somewhat realistic, there’s no way to leave the propaganda feel of The Green Berets behind. This is a warzone, and the soldiers are always smiling, aren’t affected by the killing, and don’t swear, smoke or drink. Wayne never lets us forget that we are in Vietnam to defeat Communism. Therefore, at every turn, the North Vietnamese soldier is portrayed as dirty and evil. In contrast, the South Vietnamese soldier is a gentle soul. We were, after all, the good guys.
It is interesting to note, The Green Berets wasn’t released until July, 1968, a full six months after the Communists’ Tet Offensive, which was the beginning of the end for an American victory in Vietnam. In March of 1968, the My Lai massacre happened, which seriously undermined the premise of the film in the minds of many.
The Green Berets features a clean 1080p/VC-1 transfer that looks pretty good. Skintones fluxuate, DNR has been applied to the entire film, and the grain that once dotted the Vietnamese skies occasionally resembles a flickering, soupy mess, but many other aspects of the technical presentation are sound. Colors are strong and vibrant. Blacks remain deep and well-resolved throughout, contrast is strong and stable, and detail is fairly impressive. Several scenes suffer from noticeable softness. More often than not, edge definition is adequate, background foliage and foreground fabrics are convincing, and delineation is solid, particularly for a forty-year-old catalog title. Faint artifacting, crush and aliasing appear, and yes, ringing is a constant problem, but each issue is kept to a minimum.
Warner Bros. has brought The Green Berets to Blu-ray with a Dolby TrueHD mono track. While it does the job, there’s nothing remarkable about it. The output is a bit low, so you may find yourself cranking up the volume. Dialogue is generally clear and intelligible, but voices are often either flat or tinny, explosions and gunfire tend to overwhelm the actors’ lines. It’s one of those so-so things.
The disc includes English, French, Spanish, and German spoken languages; French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Hebrew, and Finnish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
The special features are remarkably limited. A vintage featurette, The Moviemakers: The Making of The Green Berets, a seven-minute promo for the film; and a theatrical trailer, both in standard definition.
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