Danger Close: the battle of Long Tan

[pim]

I saw it this evening. I wanted it to be a good movie in the sense that I wanted it to “work” as a movie depiction of the battle. It wasn’t all bad. The action sequences were good. The rest of it, sadly, was crap. The way they depicted Col Joye and Little Pattie was laughable but the movie didn’t rise or fall on whether they’d included the Col Joye and Little Pattie characters. They only had bit part cameo roles in any case. But “cameo characters” kinda sums up the movie. A “cameo character” is a two dimensional character with zero character development and, sadly, it’s what I have come to expect from Australian productions. It wasn’t always so! Remember the movie Gallipoli? Breaker Morant? Fine movies! In fact I call them classics. But these days in an Australian production you’d be lucky to have one, at most two strong characters. The rest tend to be two dimensional cardboard cutout characters and “Danger Close” is no exception. Whoever writes movie scripts for Australian movies should be subjected to public humiliation and disgrace. The script in Danger Close is truly appalling full of hackneyed, cliche-ridden mawkishness delivered with all the depth and charisma of a wet dishcloth.

Despite all that, I’m not sorry I saw it. At least I’ll know what people are talking about. BTW the Vietnamese who were attacking the Australians were in reality the good guys. They were, after all, defending their own patch. I somehow doubt that Danger Close: the Battle of Long Tan will be a box office smash hit in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, let alone New York. It outdoes “The Green Berets” in mawkishness and at least the Green Berets had the Duke. Trust me if you wanna see a good Vietnam War movie you still can’t beat Platoon and Apocalypse Now.

[pim]

I remember when Long Tan happened. The headlines on posters outside newsagents shops shouted “Heavy Australian casualties” with “Heavy” in large font and in bold. It was in the second half of 1966 and that was when I turned 20 so it was my turn to register for nasho. Australian troops only started being deployed into Vietnam in 1966 so it was early days for Australian involvement. Public support for the Vietnam deployment was initially quite high with “yellow peril” racism and Cold War paranoia dovetailing to produce a narrative that went something like: “let’s stop them up there before we have to stop them on the Kokoda Track again”. When you pointed out that WW2 Japanese aren’t 1960s Vietnamese fighting a civil war in their own country you’d get the inevitable shrug of whitefella shoulders because “slopes all look the same don’t they”. There was an election held on Vietnam in 1966 and the result was an anti Labor landslide of tsunami proportions that buried Calwell Labor and heralded the dawn of Whitlam Labor.

Long Tan didn’t turn Australians against the war. That came later as the war turned to shit for the Americans and into an electoral negative for the Liberals. Long Tan stands out as the largest and sharpest clash of arms between Australians and New Zealanders on the one hand, and Viet Cong and North Vietnamese on the other. Apart from that the Australian engagement was largely in a backwater compared with what the Americans experienced. Long Tan made us sit up and take notice. I’m not sorry I saw the movie because it made me think about that particular battle and also the broader issue of our involvement in the Vietnam War. Particularly since we appear poised to go off on yet another military frolic at the behest of the Americans. But I still reckon it’s a crap movie.

[pim]

I just watched Platoon again on Stan for the first time in decades. What a kick ass movie. Danger Close doesn’t even come close.