John Wayne, the most patriotic American actor in history until the Australian Mel Gibson, made a ton of movies
in favor of US military actions. Perhaps his most awesome example of army enthusiasm and filmmaking ever was
the 1968 film he directed and starred in, The Green Berets.
The Green Berets was the first Vietnam War film, and to this day it's the only one that's in favor of the
war. Perhaps it's because only John Wayne truly understood Vietnam, unlike the other directors who merely served
there like Oliver Stone. Because of this, we learn many new facts about Vietnam that we don't get from typical
Vietnam films like Platoon. First of all, we learn that the war was fought in a pretty cold pine tree
forest along the 17th Parallel in autumn.
In fact, Vietnam looks quite beautiful and colorful, and it turns out that Vietcong were actually just annoying
leafers who wanted to take over the scenery behind John Wayne.
If you're starting to think that there wasn't much detail paid to this film, you're probably right, as John Wayne
himself is wearing a completely different outfit in the very next shot of this scene.
But let's get to the proud Vietnamese themselves. Competent and agile fighters, they inspire so much fear in
Americans that this Green Beret decides to put his gun down before fighting a whole bunch hand to hand.
And then comes the fight scene. With those stereotypically curly haired, permed Vietcong... white people.
The strategy that would've won us the war.
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Now, the Vietnamese aren't all played by white people. Just a lot of them. There's this Vietnamese orphan and
his dog below. The Vietnamese kid is taken in by that soldier above who uses trees to kill people. He calls the
soldier (whose name is Peter) "Peter-san," which would make him Japanese instead of Vietnamese.
That's why we picked this film out of all war films; it now represents ALL backwards Asian countries!
Now even though the portrayal of Vietnamese may not be the most accurate, director John Wayne makes sure we know
he cares deeply for them. The final scene of the movie has John Wayne walking hand-in-hand with the Vietnamese
boy, at the end of a long day, as the sun sets over the South China Sea.
Which it doesn't do. Shrug.
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