CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | Metacritic | MP3.com | TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games Books TV
Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
83 Alexandra
43 Anamorph
35 Babysitters, The
32 Backseat
80 Band's Visit, The
62 Battle for Haditha
47 Bella
63 Blind Mountain
71 Blindsight
47 Boarding Gate
63 Body of War
58 Bra Boys
70 Caramel
54 Cashback
44 Chaos Theory
32 Chapter 27
69 Chicago 10
82 Chop Shop
46 CJ7
78 Counterfeiters, The
30 Cover
48 Dark Matter
35 Deal
61 Dhamma Brothers, The
92 Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
20 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
58 Fall, The
43 Favor, The
58 First Saturday in May, The
57 Flawless
87 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
xx From Within
44 Frontier(s)
59 Fugitive Pieces
41 Funny Games
66 George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
61 Girls Rock!
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
57 Grand, The
58 Hats Off
68 Honeydripper
xx Jack and Jill vs. the World
67 Jellyfish
xx Kiss the Bride
37 Life Before Her Eyes, The
72 Life of Reilly, The
50 Look
65 Married Life
35 Meet Bill
63 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
54 Mister Lonely
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
52 Noise
61 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
55 Pathology
48 Penelope
90 Persepolis
62 Planet B-Boy
xx Plumm Summer, A
67 Praying with Lior
46 Previous Engagement, A
72 Priceless
17 Prom Night
69 Redbelt
72 Roman de gare
48 Run, Fat Boy, Run
85 Savages, The
24 Sex and Death 101
66 Shelter
75 Shotgun Stories
40 Sleepwalking
67 Snow Angels
64 Son of Rambow
71 Standard Operating Procedure
76 Stuff and Dough
64 Surfwise
xx Tashan
82 Taxi to the Dark Side
57 Teeth
56 Then She Found Me
55 Tracey Fragments, The
56 Turn the River
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
59 Under the Same Moon
76 Unforeseen, The
xx Unsettled
91 Up the Yangtze
55 Vice
79 Visitor, The
64 Water Lilies
45 Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
57 Without the King
74 Witnesses, The
63 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart
45 Zombie Strippers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.



We Were Soldiers
Paramount Pictures

We Were Soldiers reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 65 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.0 out of 10
based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 48 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for sustained sequences of graphic war violence, and for language

Starring Mel Gibson, Madeleine Stowe, Sam Elliott, Greg Kinnear, Chris Klein, Josh Daugherty, Barry Pepper, and Keri Russell

Based on the best-selling book which details the events of the battle of LZ X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley. (Paramount)


GENRE(S): War  
WRITTEN BY: Randall Wallace
Hal Moore (book)
 
DIRECTED BY: Randall Wallace  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: August 20, 2002 
Video: August 20, 2002 
Theatrical: March 1, 2002 
RUNNING TIME: 138 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
One of the best war movies of the past 20 years.
Read Full Review
88
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
"Black Hawk Down" was criticized because the characters seemed hard to tell apart. We Were Soldiers doesn't have that problem; in the Hollywood tradition it identifies a few key players, casts them with stars, and follows their stories.
Read Full Review
88
ReelViews James Berardinelli
The in-your-face style of We Were Soldiers results in a suspenseful, intense, and exhausting cinematic experience.
Read Full Review
83
Portland Oregonian Ted Mahar
The film's soldiers are more the mom-and-apple-pie, God-fearing lads of World War II movies than the cynical grunts of "Platoon" (1986) and "Full Metal Jacket" (1987).
Read Full Review
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
A powerful experience, filled with dazzlingly executed action sequences that generally avoid the rock music and drugged-out conventions of "Apocalypse Now," and even exude a certain core of humanity.
Read Full Review
80
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
You don't really watch the film; you survive it.
Read Full Review
80
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Gibson may get top billing, but it's Sam Elliott who steals all the scenes. As Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, a man who fires with his own .45 revolver rather than the standard M-16 rifles, he's full of hilariously colorful comments.
Read Full Review
80
The New York Times Dana Stevens
Like the best war movies -- and like martial literature going back to the Iliad -- it balances the dreadful, unassuageable cruelty of warfare and the valor and decency of those who fight.
Read Full Review
80
New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky
It succeeds where its recent predecessor miserably fails because it demands that you suffer the dreadfulness of war from both sides. That might not make it a milestone, but it's a hell of an improvement.
Read Full Review
80
Film Threat David Grove
This is a good film; strong, honest, strikingly photographed (by Dean Semler) and appropriately devastating.
Read Full Review
75
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Probably the best thing you can say about We Were Soldiers is that it does justice to an awful conflict.
Read Full Review
75
New York Daily News Jami Bernard
We Were Soldiers works. The action is well-staged and realistic. And Gibson is a commanding presence in a role that has more shadings and stature than his usual action heroes.
75
Boston Globe Jay Carr
It isn't afraid to genuflect to heroes and heroism and has everything it needs to connect with the resurgence of patriotism after Sept. 11.
75
USA Today Mike Clark
This also is the rare combat movie that deals substantially with mourning widows on the home front.
Read Full Review
75
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The writer-director bestows honor -- generously, apolitically -- not only on the dead and still living American veterans who fought in Ia Drang, but also on their families, on their Vietnamese adversaries, and on the families of their adversaries too.
Read Full Review
70
Variety Todd McCarthy
Gibson has the closest thing to a John Wayne part that anyone's played since the Duke himself rode into the sunset, and he plays it damn well.
Read Full Review
70
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Isn't a great movie; I'd say it's barely a good one. But it's a war movie that at least acknowledges the distinction between macho and masculinity, always putting the dignity of the latter over the bluster of the former.
Read Full Review
70
Newsweek David Ansen
A powerful and moving experience -- once it overcomes its clunky, badly written and clichéd first act.
70
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Manages to evoke a complex series of reactions. It both frustrates with its unrelenting sentimentality and impresses with the overwhelming physicality of its combat sequences. These in turn are so powerful they take on a life of their own, sending a message that is probably quite opposite to the one the filmmakers intended.
Read Full Review
70
Slate David Edelstein
It's square, stiff, and in places cheesy; it's also authentically harrowing -- and blood-showered, blood-drowned.
Read Full Review
70
Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Soldiers is righteously explicit about the damage artillery does to human flesh, and for its part, it proves relentlessly unpleasant.
Read Full Review
70
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The battle, expertly shot by Dean Semler, captures the chaos of guerrilla warfare paralleled in "Black Hawk Down" and gives the film a scarring documentary realism.
Read Full Review
63
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Some scenes achieve dramatic greatness and emotions that reach to the heart's core. Almost as many have the tinny ring of a badly counterfeited coin.
Read Full Review
63
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
We Were Soldiers feels strangely irrelevant -- a well-acted, well-crafted and inconsequential visit to woefully familiar territory.
Read Full Review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
If the action is graphic and immediate, other aspects of the movie are inexcusably bad.
Read Full Review
63
Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
One admires Wallace's intentions while despairing at his execution. Yet as clumsily directed as his film is, it inspires compassion for Moore, his men and their foes. And in that, there is merit.
Read Full Review
60
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
While the movie is dreadfully clumsy or sentimental around the edges, there's no denying the strength of Mr. Gibson's performance or the power of the savage combat, a 90-minute sequence that's even more graphic than the horrific firefight in Somalia in "Black Hawk Down."
60
New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Fitfully effective as a battle movie, and Mel Gibson does his rugged best to take center stage without seeming to. But the movie is self-righteous in a way that's frequently unseemly.
Read Full Review
60
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Leaves all the real risks to the young warriors at Ia Drang and collects easy dividends on their bravery. In the end, it honors them by paying tribute to itself.
Read Full Review
50
TV Guide Ken Fox
Who these brave men were and why they fought disappears under the usual clichés, while the astounding acts of courage that occurred at Ia Drang are lost to the dust and din.
Read Full Review
50
LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
It was a hellish encounter, as well as a portent of the 10 years to come, and as such deserves far better than Mel Gibson's glower and writer-director Randall Wallace's guns-and-Moses platitudes.
Read Full Review
50
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Ultimately, though, We Were Soldiers fails to bring as much to the table as it at first seems it might.
Read Full Review
50
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
The movie never generates the authority it needs to be all that it can be.
Read Full Review
50
Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector
Though the questionable motives and bad planning of offscreen characters who far outrank Gibson make it difficult to take at face value one soldier's last words -- "I'm glad I could die for my country" -- some viewers will, which may be as the filmmakers intended.
Read Full Review
50
The New Yorker David Denby
Yet as art this revisionist movie, grimly effective as some of it is, doesn't hold a candle to the remarkable cycle of pictures in the late seventies and the eighties which captured the discordant character of a tragic war. [11 Mar 2002, p. 92]
38
New York Post Jonathan Foreman
It's a shame that the book "We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young" fell into the hands of writer-director Randall Wallace ("Braveheart"), a filmmaker who wouldn't recognize subtlety and understatement if they were to attack him in the street.
Read Full Review
25
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Rarely have Gibson's tears seemed more fictional than in this supposedly authentic account of a historical event that's far too tragic to merit such superficial treatment.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 48 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Graham M. gave it a7:
Made very well, and is extremely intense. It is good that a war film be made as violent and as intense as this, cutting the BS. Because that is how to perhaps shock some out of apathy and show how truly evil, and senseless war is. A better film might have shown both sides a bit more evenly, to better humanize each side, for the true tragedy of war is that one is not fighting demons on the other side of the battle, but rather a soldier much like themselves.

john h gave it an8:
Well done & affecting, without major flaws.

[Anonymous] gave it an8:
A pretty intense Vietnam movie. Great fights and the right touch of drama.

Chimp gave it a 10:
Not as good as saving private ryan or black hawk down, but an amazingly excellent movie nonetheless. Not at all like Platoon, which showed most of the soldiers as psychotic killers, this movie shows them as the first soldiers in vietnam who were the first to experience its horrors.

Sunny S. gave it a 10:
This is one of my favourite war movies. It perfectly depicts the human suffering that accompanies war very graphically. Another good note is that the movie isn't biased, it doesn't dehumanize either side as being monstrous and instead evokes one's sympathy for how tragic and sad bloodshed can be.

Leigh M. gave it a 10:
This Is My Absolute Favorite war movie. Just AWESOME!!

Mysti K. gave it a 10:
I think this movie shows the reality that some wish to hide... Obviously, those who rated this movie low skipped out on the horror of the Vietnam War. I'm only 18, but my dad has told me stories of this tragic war. We Were Soldiers is one of the best portrails of the Vietnam War that I have ever seen. (China Beach, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, etc.)

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | BOOKS | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

About CNET Networks | Jobs | Advertise | Partnerships                                Visit other CNET Networks sites:

Copyright ©2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use