A Bright Shining Lie (1998)

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

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

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

This film is interesting in comparison with Go Tell the Spartans, which came out 20 years earlier in 1978. The earlier film starred Burt Lancaster, who is less than gung-ho, unlike Paxton in Bright Shining Lie. What is similar in both films is the way both men begin to realize that what is really happening on the ground in Vietnam is quite different than what the administration is telling the public and the administration refuses to hear the truth from the soldiers on the ground, giving orders that actually get soldiers killed. Paxton's character just keeps upping the ante, refusing to back down, insisting that he can somehow win this war and work around the military leaders. Lancaster gives up on fighting the military leaders and just stays with his men in the field. In Court-martial of Billy Mitchell, Gary Cooper is another gung-ho soldier in an even earlier time period, the 1920's, just after World War I, when airplanes were new to the military. He wants to create an entire Air Force, which both the Army and Navy think is unnecessary. He somehow predicts a future when the USA's fleet at Pearl Harbor is attacked by bombs from Japanese airplanes (how did he guess that?) and foresees the need for a modern air force. He is willing to sacrifice his military career to get that message across. Again, a fascinating film in which the top military leaders refuse to listen to the soldiers in the field (this time in the air vs. on the ground) and these soldiers die because the leaders refuse to listen. These three films certainly show that the military is a pretty bad place for soldiers whose lives may be unnecessarily sacrificed by the commanders who refuse to listen to the people actually fighting the war.

The movie showed it like it really was. I did not know Vann, but two Colonels that I know did work with him. It shows who really ran the war in Vietnam. It shows Westmoreland for what he was too. The best part is that it shows how the Military had little or no say in conducting the war. It lets us see that it was a political war and that maybe it could have had a different outcome if it had been pursued correctly. The action is good, and it is authentic. Paxton is intense. His performance is often complimented on that he could have actually been Vann. Or that he could actually have been in a war. TYhe battle sequences are realistic without being overly bloody. The dialog was well presented and was mostly believable.

This made for TV movie was absolutely fantastic as far as I am concerned. I think Dianne Crittenden did an excellent job with the cast. Bill Paxton as John Paul Vann did a great job. I don't really care for Amy Madigan, but she portrayed Mary Jane Vann divinely. Donal Logue made the perfect reporter as well.

This TV movie is simply awful! There's no imagination, no innovation, the cast is bad (while Paxton tries hard to behonest), the story is weak and there's an army of clichés: Viet girls are easy to seduce, everybody's crying when the radio tells that JFK was shot. There was Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, or Platoon, to tell everybody how stupid this Viet-Nam war was. But in the 1990's, HBO produce this movies in a very conservative way, for very conservative people, tryin' hard to find a patriotic hero for this nonsense war. This movie is an insult for the young people who died at this war. The 1990's are a very very sad period...