It's a curious thing about all of the films that Randall Wallace has made, but they invariably have this horrible, irritating noise on the soundtrack. Every single one, and We Were Soldiers is no exception... there it is, that insistent, nagging, formless and faintly rotten distraction. Hearing it is like having a decaying moth twitching in your ear.
And stranger still, this repulsive, over-ripe interference always seems to coincide with the movement of the actors' lips. I of course thought at first that this was just dialogue, but hah, I was young and foolish. I know better today. Even in the world of Modern Movies, such awful sounds couldn't seriously be intended to convey characterisation. Nobody could seriously be so unutterably brazen in the deployment of such blatant exposition, such ugly and stupid sub-John Wayne banter - nobody who once won wrote an oscar-winning epic could seriously produce such banal and mindless wittering.
Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps it IS dialogue, but really... to assume that this anything more than (at most) a dadaist selection of random noises that have a semblance of meaning would be a step down the ladder of evolution. Next I would be examining chicken entrails for their subtle messages.
So, defective soundtrack aside, what did I think?
Well, I am assured by an article I read a little while ago that this film came truly 'from the bottom of Wallace's heart'. I suspect this to have been a misprint, as the film I saw gave every impression of having come truly from the heart of the man's bottom.
And stranger still, this repulsive, over-ripe interference always seems to coincide with the movement of the actors' lips. I of course thought at first that this was just dialogue, but hah, I was young and foolish. I know better today. Even in the world of Modern Movies, such awful sounds couldn't seriously be intended to convey characterisation. Nobody could seriously be so unutterably brazen in the deployment of such blatant exposition, such ugly and stupid sub-John Wayne banter - nobody who once won wrote an oscar-winning epic could seriously produce such banal and mindless wittering.
Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps it IS dialogue, but really... to assume that this anything more than (at most) a dadaist selection of random noises that have a semblance of meaning would be a step down the ladder of evolution. Next I would be examining chicken entrails for their subtle messages.
So, defective soundtrack aside, what did I think?
Well, I am assured by an article I read a little while ago that this film came truly 'from the bottom of Wallace's heart'. I suspect this to have been a misprint, as the film I saw gave every impression of having come truly from the heart of the man's bottom.