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| Directors: John Wayne, Ray Kellogg
Actors: Luke Askew, Bruce Cabot, Eddy Donno, Jason Evers, Edward Faulkner
Studio: Warner Home Video
List Price: $4.98
Buy Used: $0.14
You Save: $4.84 (97%)
New (15) Used (58) Collectible (11) from $0.14
Rating:  112 reviews
Sales Rank: 11977
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Hifi Sound, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Vietnamese (Original Language)
Rating: G (General Audience)
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 141 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 6300267830
UPC: 012569100237
EAN: 9786300267831
ASIN: 6300267830
Theatrical Release Date: 1968
Release Date: April 1, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Average used video with original case * * We carefully inspected this * Great customer service * Satisfaction Guaranteed!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 112
 Avoid This Like A Horseshoe Ambush February 20, 2008
!Edwin C. Pauzer (New York City)
20 out of 26 found this review helpful
I read someone else's review about this, and it peaked my interest enough to write my own about a movie that is a misfire on many levels from the outset to the bitter end.
First, there's the dialogue, which is ueber patriotic from the get-go to build support for the war. (It was released in 1968). Some of it will give you the chills of embarrassment when a South Vietnamese Army captain says: "First, kill all stinking Cong..." You forget the rest of what he says as you feel your face flush red and wonder why the two actors he's addressing aren't laughing their web gear off. An abundance of military colloquialisms, popular at the time seem inserted rather than natural e.g. "bought the farm" or "Puff, the Magic Dragon." Loosely translated that means you're dead and you're about to die--respectively.
Next, we have the plot.
One lone reporter is anti war and antagonistic to the mission of US Army Special Forces (Green Berets), and he's going to prove it by going to Vietnam and see it first hand. He attends an orientation at Ft. Benning where the scenes, especially of the airborne school, are real. It is during this part of the movie that John Wayne is trying mightily to remember his lines, and not appear like someone who should have retired twenty years earlier.
Next we see Jim Hutton, an enlisted greenie beanie who is a scrounger which translates as thief, who sleeps in "jammies," and has a 1941 style barracks full of collectibles that no self-respecting special forces soldier would be caught dead with.
Now the rest of the characters who all go to Vietnam:
They are as numerous and predictable as it is easy finding cheese in any box of C rations. Sergeant Muldoon is the tough senior NCO and weapons expert who liked to make things explode with his chemistry set as a kid. (No kidding)! There's the mild-mannered doc who inoculates entire villages. There's Jackie Soo who appears that he hasn't graduated from acting school but you secretly hope will start singing "A Hundred Million Miracles." Then there's Sgt. Provo, who before you can say, "There's a snake in my boot," notices that names of every building in country are named after someone who was killed in action. (Gee, guess what happens to him)! Next, a cute Vietnamese boy trying to look like a puppy dog without a tail sees the Hutton character Sgt. Peterson as a father-figure. So, naturally, you know what's going to happen to Hutton.
After saving Vietnamese and fighting off VC attacks, lo' and behold, the reporter played by Michael Jansen says that he's going home to write something different that his editors will not like. (Ya' don't say)! John Wayne is proud of him. And of course, there's the little Vietnamese boy who runs to each returning helicopter to see if his Sgt. Peter "San" has returned. John Wayne goes to talk to him.
There is plenty of shoot-em up action matched by an equal number of dull moments and bad dialogue. John Wayne goes by the code name, Bulldog. That seems about right as this movie is a complete hund.
Avoid this like you would a horseshoe ambush.
Airborne!
P.S. I would like to thank my Amazon friends, you know who you are, for all your support. It's my distinct pleasure knowing you. A man can never have enough friends--especially people like you.
 Special War for Special Forces February 12, 2004
Dr Lim Michael (Asia)
19 out of 28 found this review helpful
MAKE no mistake, the Duke tells his side of the VN war. John Wayne felt it was his patriotic duty to answer "Jane Fonda" pinko liberal anti-VN War protesters and Hanoi Jane herself, the most hated sumbag by US GIs in VN. As a veteran of many covert low intensity wars, dedicated Colonel Mike Kirby of the US Special Forces, John Wayne leads a dedicated "A" team of highly skilled "Professors of Warfare" deep behind enemy lines in VN. Based in part on Capt. Roger Donlon's heroic and harrowing defence of a Green Beret outpost that won him the 1st Congressional Medal of Honour awarded in Vietnam, John Wayne is at his patriotic best in his realistic potrayal of a veteran of many, many wars fighting his country's enemies. The footage of an AC130 gunship "Puff the Magic Dragon" that terminates the VC that have over run the Special Forces camp is chilling in its depiction of quick death from the sky. Fascinating too to military buffs are the techniques of sentry silencing shown including garotting, as well as the use of the STABO extraction rig used to extract the enemy NVA General for interrogation. John Wayne's parting line as the sun sets over Danang, when he puts the Green Beret over the head of the orphan Vietnamese boy "Ham Chunk", "You're what this is all about, Green Beret" brings tears to your eyes. The plight of the boat people after the fall of Saigon showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that what John Wayne said to Ham Chunk in Danang Air Base was in fact TRUE. Refugees are people who vote with their feet. If you have ever seen the booby traps exhibited in the Cu Chi Tunnels exhibit you will realise that the sometimes simple and warm Vietnamese people can turn very nasty. Just see for yourself the many different leg traps made with rusty 6 inch long nails coated with faeces used to slice up unwary ARVN and US GIs and you will see exactly what I mean. As Ken, a good friend of mine always says, "Seeing is believing". If you know people who were in the re-education camps after the fall of Saigon, you won't be so quick to condemn this film. The Communists sytematically starved to death thousand in the re-education camps. my frind had to eat spiders and ants to stay alive. John Wayne had the guts and the money to tell the other side of the story, the side the pinko hippie pressure groups refused to see. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. Today's Green Berets actually trace their lineage to the OSS of WW2 which set Europe ablaze and helped free a Nazi occupied continent. Today, the intrepid and indomitable Green Berets carry out the same daring mission President JF Kennedy gave them - De Opresso Liber which means to "liberate the opressed". In Afghanistan and Iraq, they fight today to keep freedom alive and I for one wish them every success in all their endeavours. De Opresso Liber!Dr. M The Travelling Gourmet.
Wayne Sticks It To The Antiwar Left December 9, 2000
Michael Daly (Wakefield, MA USA)
18 out of 27 found this review helpful
The Green Berets offends a lot of movie critics. Leonard Maltin's comments pretty much sum up the "right thinking" attitude toward John Wayne's filmed tribute to the Army's Special Forces. It shows that Wayne got them where it hurt most - he affronted their worldview. This, ultimately, was and is the point Wayne hoped to make.
Inspired by Robin Moore's superlative nonfiction novel about the Green Berets in Vietnam circa 1964, Wayne didn't set out to make an overly realistic portrayal of the fighting in Vietnam - his purpose was to put to the big screen a sympathetic portrayal of American soldiers and the American effort in Vietnam at a time when the term baby-killer was becoming an all-too-familiar libel pasted on those in the service. Wayne had his own misgivings over how the war was handled at the top level of government, but he noted over the years that the US did make a commitment, and the idea for the film came after a USO tour of the country and chats with soldiers.
Wayne wanted the film made in Vietnam itself, but could not get permission and thus had to settle for filming it at Fort Benning, Georgia. Wayne and Ray Kellogg strove hard to make the film as believable looking as they could given the constraints they were working under.
Nitpickers will of course uncover a lot wrong with the film - the overly stylized battle scenes, the stylized and sometimes cliched portrayal of the soldier-characters - notably Jim Hutton's Sgt. Peterson and Also Ray's Sgt. Muldoon. They'll note, as a recent biography of Wayne quite unfairly does, the differences between the events in the film and similar events in Robin Moore's book. But the film has aged much better than the leftist fraudulence of such works as Vietnam: Hearts & Minds and the quasi-surrealism of Apocalypse Now have. This is because Wayne and company made it without any pretense, and because the film's pro-American view of the war is far more accurate an historical gauge given the disasterous events that befell Indochina after the fall of Saigon - as Wayne might have asked, why would anyone want to see the Allies not win in Vietnam?
As an action film, The Green Berets is quite entertaining, as Wayne assembled an engaging cast including Hutton, Ray, David Janssen in one of his first projects after the completion of The Fugitive television series, Luke Askew - reportedly Askew was a reallife antiwar activist, so how he signed onto this film is a puzzle - Edward Faulkner, Jason Evers, George Takei, and Jack Soo. The action for two-thirds of the film centers around a Forces basecamp that is in the heart of 'Cong territory, and which the NVA assaults and finally destroys only to be slaughtered by an AC-47 gunship. Following this mini-Khe Sanh seige Wayne signs on to lead a mission to kidnap a well known 'Cong general.
The film ultimately is an action yarn that pops the antiwar left right in the eyes.
 One of the worst August 1, 2006
Scott E. Almgren (Chicago, IL United States)
18 out of 36 found this review helpful
One of the worst war movies and one of the worst Vietnam war movies ever. If you want to see a better one made at about the same time, see Burt Lancaster in "Go Tell the Spartans". If you ever wonder about how clueless some people can be about history and world events, this should pretty much explain it.
 from a patriot who was not afraid. June 11, 2004
Andrew Ehrlich (East Hampton, NY United States)
17 out of 29 found this review helpful
if John Wayne had made something like this today he would be ostracized from all of Hollywood and from about 2% of this nation. he was a man, a patriot and he wanted to show the good of our struggle. vietnam was a war that was not unlike every other war, the only difference was our citizens. the baby boomers grew up spoiled (founding fathers of the modern left). they didnt understand hard work and what a country need's to do for freedom. the left will today say freedom is a slogan, that we will always be free, they will say bush's war is for oil or some uneducated and cliched response, but freedom is not just about a war or occupation, it's the freedom to not be afraid to get on a airplane, the freedom to not fear going into tall buildings, the freedom not to fear gathering large groups in public. and for the arab world it means to not be afraid to have your wife drive your car, or wear a dress in public, or to question a religious authority. the whole idea of vietnam was to prevent the spread of communism, it was a war that transcended vietnam itself, it was a war to measure our country and our people's resolve. vietnam taught our enemies (and todays modern terrorists) that if they can scare us, horrify us or kill enough of us that we will cower and not fight. Stalin, Khrushchev, khadafi, Usama, and hussein thought this, and we taught them all a lesson through might. just because liberal's think war is not the answer it does not mean that our enemies do also. we are not europe, if we do not spend money on our military, flex our muscles, set deadlines and take action no one ele will. we do not have anyone to protect us like europe and the world have us. terrorist do not seek peace, they do not hate us because we are us they hate us because of hollywood, because of our freedom from starvation, our comfort in life and from our belief that we can live life any way we want without regard. John wayne in his portrayal of vietnam was not "propaganda" it was to boost moral for the country, to support our efforts in defeating communism. i read before someone said john wayne was no patriot, what is a patriot if not to support the united states and to keep it's moral up? john wayne did that, ask any soldier from WWII to the present day. i feel bad for the liberal's they hate everyone, stand for everything while believing in nothing and really do not know anything of history or of humanity.
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