The Associated Press
Actors Mel Gibson (center) and Sam Elliot appear in a scene from "We Were Soldiers." Hollywood's renewed interest in war films has coincidentally given audiences a spate of patriotic military films that complement the nation's mood in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Audiences eager for heroic stories in wake of Sept. 11

DAVID GERMAIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published Monday, March 4, 2002

LOS ANGELES -- Long before Sept. 11, movie studios had rediscovered their love of the soldier. A rush of military dramas shot before the terrorist attacks are now riding a wave of public patriotism at its highest level since World War II.

By chance, Hollywood already had chosen to revisit notions of duty, honor, camaraderie and sacrifice in a range of combat arenas, from World War II and Vietnam to Somalia and Bosnia.

The courage-under-fire themes of "Black Hawk Down," "Behind Enemy Lines," "Hart's War," "We Were Soldiers" and the upcoming "Windtalkers" would do John Wayne proud.

Fighting for each other

While generally projecting the U.S. military in a good light, the films are not so much exercises in flag-waving as they are acclamations of the fraternity of fighting.

"These guys went over there with ideals and pride and desire to be the vanguard of freedoms most of us take for granted," said Mel Gibson, who stars in "We Were Soldiers" as Lt. Col. Hal Moore, commander of the first big battle against the North Vietnamese in 1965.

"Once they got there, they were under siege, backs to the wall. They didn't eat or drink or sleep. Basically, it became that they were fighting for each other. It's not mom or apple pie you're fighting for, it's the guy next to you."

The call to arms for fresh war films came after a period of indifference toward the soldiery during the self-absorbed 1980s and early '90s. Cartoonish action heroes ruled the adventure genre, and the big war movie of the '80s was "Platoon," which presented Vietnam troops in an ugly light.

"Platoon" came after more than a decade of disillusionment with federal authority after the Watergate scandal and Vietnam pullout. Then, the military came to seem less relevant after the Soviet Union crumbled and the Pentagon closed bases.

"It was not the most popular thing in the world to be a soldier then," said Rod Lurie, a 1984 West Point graduate who directed last year's military prison drama "The Last Castle."

Human face of war

In the mid-1990s, ceremonies, books and news coverage of the 50th anniversary of D-Day and the end of World War II rekindled appreciation for veterans. Tom Brokaw's World War II best-seller "The Greatest Generation" and Steven Spielberg's Normandy invasion epic "Saving Private Ryan" put human faces on that war for a generation that had not lived through it.

"The other part of it was, a lot of our fathers and parents who stood for those things the greatest generation has now become known for were beginning to die, quite honestly," said David Ladd, a producer on "Hart's War," which stars Bruce Willis as a fourth-generation West Point grad plotting sabotage while imprisoned by the Nazis.

"You saw a lot more honor paid to the men who made the sacrifices, which had gone out the window for awhile in the years before that."

Hollywood put a rush of patriotic combat films into production. Most of the footage in the current battle films was in the can before Sept. 11, but the attacks and the war on terrorism have heightened public interest in stories about soldiers of virtue.

The '80s and '90s were a "fairly frivolous time," when Americans were more concerned with their stock portfolios than with political issues or military threats, said "We Were Soldiers" director Randall Wallace, who also wrote Gibson's "Braveheart."

"Great things did not seem to be at stake to people," Wallace said. "Sept. 11 reminded us there is such a thing in the world as evil, and there is the necessity for such things as duty, honor and sacrifice."

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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