So the crew out at Warner Brothers sent me a copy of The Green Berets to review, and it turns out this sucker’s got something of a history to it.

See, it’s about a bunch of green beret soldiers (complete with Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler’s own “Ballad of the Green Beret” over the opening and end credits) who go into Vietnam to recover a friendly captive general.  Meanwhile, they’re being followed by a newspaperman who’s under strict instructions to paint the war in as bad a light as possible.  But after what he sees there, will he be able to?  Will the green berets save the captive general?  And who, in their incredibly idiosyncratic unit, will not make it out alive?

Back in the day when this first came out, people lambasted it.  It’s only inches from pure-on propaganda, and frankly, as a film, it’s only marginally well done.  It’s clear they had an agenda going into this one, and thus, some of the story elements have been modified to divorce it from reality and instead make the American troops look better.  It’s not a surprise that John Wayne, who stars in this, would want something like that done, but still, we all should know about it for the sake of truth.

Since no one gives a fart in a stiff breeze about Vietnam today, the value of that agenda is lost.  And all that’s left is the movie, a somewhat shabby, somewhat shoddy little film that does a fair job, but only a fair job.  As a war movie, this is passable.  Sure, I’d sooner watch Heartbreak Ridge with a  tenpenny nail in each of  my feet than The Green Berets without nails, but that’s not to say that The Green Berets is specifically BAD.  I’d definitely sooner watch it than take the nails without the good war movie.

And that’s sad, in its way, that the best John Wayne could muster up for this was thoroughly mediocre.

The Screenhead Ten Scale salutes all veterans but wishes this movie could’ve been better, and thus gives it a five out of ten for being strictly not bad.