A problem with this movie after watching it for the second time
It takes place in the early 1970s and there is no anti-war sentiment at all in this small town.
sharePretty conservative steel mill town on Pennsylvania, it wasn't exactly a hotbed of protest. Most of the hippie/protest movement is associated with large citites.
The was a 'brotherhood' social effect with this type of town that would have shunned would be protesters.
That war tore families apart. I just doubt that everyone would have been so happy seeing these three older men going off to fight a war that was lost in 1971-72.
shareI can't say they were happy, but you can argue that steel mill workers and their families are more 'duty driven' then your standard family.
So guys in their 30s with jobs and families were still volunteering to go to Vietnam in 1971-72 when Nixon was withdrawing troops by the thousands?? The movie should have taken place earlier in the war.
shareI live next door to a man who flew choppers and entered the war so late there were almost no active US military ground units. He says when he got there he worked with South Korean ground troops.
shareThere's a scene in the movie where a green beret is having a drink and DeNiro's character asks him - What's it like over there?? They didn't know how bad the war was in 1972?? The timing of the movie was way off.
shareI do remember that.
shareI guess this was a news blackout in this small town.
shareI guess we should try to relate it to WWII. Were guys still signing up to fight after finding out about battles in the Pacific with massive US casualties? Maybe that’s a bad example because WWII was not exactly televised and in the living rooms of America like the Vietnam war.
shareHere's the American troop levels in Vietnam by year. It went form 158,800 in 1971 to 24,200 in 1972 and down to almost 0 by 1973.
https://www.americanwarlibrary.com/vietnam/vwatl.htm
Im pretty sure my neighbor went in during 1972. I’m going to ask him what the national feeling on our involvement in his perspective was.
shareI saw my neighbor today and he said he volunteered and went over seas in 1971. He said there was still a draft and he volunteered to enter as an officer.
shareI assumed that they were drafted. I just looked it up, the draft did not end until 1973.
I haven't watched this movie in awhile, they volunteered?
here are the troop levels by year. why were they needed?
https://www.americanwarlibrary.com/vietnam/vwatl.htm
My neighbor said that in 1971, when he went to Vietnam, the US was mostly supporting Korean ground troops with Artillery, Mechanical and Air support.
shareI just think the movie was off by about five years time wise. I watched Coming Home (1978) today which was set in 1968 and the movie just made more sense.
shareFrom The NY Times:
“Of course, that specific incident didn't happen.” says Ned Tanen, president of, Universal Pictures, distributor of the film. “It's 11 film, and films use metaphors. I'm proud of the movie. It makes me feel good that people will sit through something that isn't intended as pure entertainment. And I know Cimino didn't intend the movie to be racist. His thrust was to make a film about comradeship among the people who volunteer to fight our wars. The men in the film were not drafted. They were the second‐generation Americans from the coal mines of West Virginia, the steel mills of Ohio, whose heritage is to offer to fight.”
Hey I learned something! thanks for posting.
It may be unusual
but not implausible. Steel working is a manly man type of job. Some of these men regard combat as the ultimate test of their manhood. The war was ending, if they did not go, they would have spent the rest of their lives not knowing if they would pass this test.