We Were Soldiers Presents Worthwhile Violence

Violence in film can do one of two things, depending in large part on how it is presented: it can either harden the viewer, inducing him to accept as normal, and even to be entertained by, death and bloodshed; or it can awaken the viewer to the horrors of the violence endemic to a fallen world, and the value of the human lives it claims. The first type of violence can be termed gratuitous. The second type I would call sacred.

This "sacred violence" is typified in the film We Were Soldiers, a drama centered on the first major engagement of American troops in the Vietnam War. Rather than concentrating on drug abuse, prostitution, and disillusionment, as so many misguided Vietnam movies do, We Were Soldiers presents young men who truly value their country, trust their leaders, and exhibit astounding faith in God. It is this emphasis on truly admirable and sympathetic heroes that sanctifies the terrible violence that naturally pervades the film.

Mel Gibson plays Colonel Hal Moore, who wrote the book, We Were Soldiers Once… And Young, on which the movie is based. The film depicts Moore as the ideal American soldier. At home he has a loving, Christian family; he prays every night with his children. On the battlefield he his deadly to the enemy, fiercely dedicated to his men, and eminently competent. On several occasions throughout the film he is shown praying, including once in a church with a fellow soldier and worried father.

We also get to meet the wives of many of the soldiers. These brave women pool their resources to help each other deal with their husbands' absence and, all too often, their deaths. We become more familiar with the soldiers through seeing their families.

It is getting to know the soldiers as husbands and fathers that makes the violence in the film genuinely worthwhile rather than gratuitous. Every time a man is killed or wounded, we see not just a nameless hunk of human flesh, but a man who will be remembered and missed. We mourn in our own small way with the family back home and with the friends on the battlefield. Men are killed while performing selfless acts of sacrifice: one leaps on a grenade to save his friends; another is shot while carrying a fellow soldier off the battlefield. The violence is neither fun nor exciting. It is brutal, it is tragic, and it is sickening. It is what it should be. It is cathartic. It makes us reevaluate our own lives and resolve to live in a way that is worthy of their sacrifice. It makes us wonder what could possibly be worth that kind of suffering. It makes us look around and see that our soldiers fought for the very blessings that we enjoy today.

There have been many other films that have made good use of this kind of violence. However, We Were Soldiers adds an element that most others lack. That element is faith. One soldier observes that he knows that God has a plan for him. We see that his suffering therefore does not derive its meaning from our actions today, but from the God who allowed him to suffer. There are many horrible deaths in the film, but none of them are meaningless, even when accidentally caused by the Americans themselves.

We Were Soldiers encourages our gratitude for the often-neglected American veterans of Vietnam. Moreover, by pointing us to God, it helps us to rise above the despair wrought by the suffering in our own lives.