Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Excellent but underrated film

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The Vietnam War, for some reason, seems to be the favorite subject of veteran Canadian director Sidney J. Furie, who has made at least 5 movies covering various themes of the war over the years. He does deserve credit for making probably the very first serious Vietnam War film (The Boys in Company C) in 1978, and the first movie portraying the service of women in the war (Purple Hearts). Though this movie may not stack up with the operatic likes of "Platoon" and "The Deer Hunter", I actually found myself drawn into this one, right through the twist ending.Now, I'm not a fan of the recent trend in M. Night Shyamalan-style twist endings in one big-budget Hollywood flick after another; if a storyline is compelling enough by itself, it shouldn't require a cop-out ending which makes everything before it null and void. However, with the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth accusations of Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004, as well as the Presidential campaign of John McCain and the myriad accusations leveled against Obama and Bill Clinton for their past, I did think this ending was kind of interesting and topical. Like the ending of "The Boys in Company C," it encapsulates much of the mixed-up political feelings Americans have about that war and politics in general.The acting here by Bobby Hosea and Michael Ironside is amazingly good. If you watch this without the expectations of a big-budget Hollywood epic, you are much more likely to enjoy it.

Usually I am ready to champion a film that's been pretty much slagged off by everyone else. I mean, it only had 215 votes and, besides, it has Ally Sheedy in it. Surely it can't be that bad?! Sorry to say but it was indeed exceedingly low rent at best. I was pretty unconvinced from the word "go". The opening cab ride, where a short news flash on the car radio takes the entire journey, suddenly had me seeing the flashing red lights that portend a real stinker. Nothing about any of the characters had any sense of authenticity and you could not really care about any of them. The war scenes were hoke and the whole thing is a badly written, badly directed and badly acted mess. There are plenty of ways to spend an hour and a half. I wouldn't waste it watching this.

One of the worst films I've ever seen that purports to be about Vietnam or Veterans. No, wait... it's just a poor film in every way.The writing is painfully bad, the acting is weak, and the scenes in Vietnam (or was it Thailand or the Philippines?) were wasted. If you could get back to Vietnam to film the Majestic hotel, why not something more than that? Virtually the entire film takes place in a hotel room in Saigon with some of the most painful dialogue you'll ever see on screen. It's as if it's trying to be a parody of all bad spy-war films.They obviously did NOT bother is a military consultant or technical adviser for the combat scenes. It would be impossible to write a spoiler because by the end you couldn't care less what happens. It is just awful.

I have to say, I didn't expect much out of this, but I was pleasantly surprised. The story is really fascinating, and has some unexpected twists that make the characters a lot more complex than I expected. I didn't think Michael Ironside was overacting, so much as showing just how desperate, and lost he was. His performance made sense for the unhinged man he plays.And, y'know, it's nice to know Ally Sheedy is still getting a paycheck, even if she isn't an 80's brat packer anymore.Anyway...I'm not a huge war movie fan, but this one had a lot of interesting layers, and the contrast between the war scenes and the stifling hotel scenes worked really well.