“I wanted to be a war hero, man, I wanted to go out and kill for my country. And now, I’m here to tell you that I have killed for my country or whatever. And I don’t feel good about it. Because there’s not enough reason, man, to feel a person die in your hands or to see your best buddy get blown away. I’m here to tell you, it’s a lousy thing, man. I don’t see any reason for it. And there’s a lot of shit that I did over there that I find fucking hard to live with.” 

Why it’s a left-wing film

“Coming Home” was the first film produced under Jane Fonda’s terribly important-sounding production shingle, IPC Films or, Indochina Peace Campaign. She was inspired in part by her friend Ron Kovic, a Vietnam Veteran turned anti-war activist who would later be the subject of his own biopic, Oliver Stone’s “Born on the 4th of July.” Set in 1968 and focusing primarily on three veterans and their personal and emotional struggles after returning home from the war, this well-produced, well-directed and brilliantly acted drama nonetheless aids and abets the left’s monstrous view of the American fighting man and does its part in cementing the unfair stereotype of the Vietnam Vet as victim, dupe, war criminal, crazy and any or all of the above.  

Director Hal Ashby immediately sets his theme in place during the opening scene where a half dozen or so wounded vets sit around a pool table in a Veteran’s hospital drinking beer and debating the war. Quite deliberately, the lone man defending America’s decision to defend our South Vietnamese allies from brutal communist aggressors in the North, is thoroughly drowned out by the “moral authority” of the others (as Jon Voight’s Luke silently listens on). In the end, all voices are quieted by the Veteran who speaks film’s real message, how Vietnam Vets must learn to live with what they did over there.

Luke is a Marine who returned from the war a paraplegic and a bitterly angry one at that. Like Ron Kovic, he went to war for God and country and came back disillusioned and haunted by what he saw and did. Eventually he’s able to reenter the world thanks mainly to a tender love affair he engages in with Sally (Fonda), a conservative  militarywife married to the chauvinistic Bob (Bruce Dern), a Marine officer who’s just left for his own tour in Vietnam. Luke’s anger over his war experience soon turns into activism. He vows to stop as many young men as he can from making the same mistake he did, going so far as to chain himself to the front gate of a Marine base. (more…)

The men and women who earn the right to wear eagle, globe and anchor of the United States Marine Corps are a special breed.   To those outside the Corps, they talk funny.  They look funny.  They are extremely impressed with themselves – and they have every right to be. 

My beloved United States Army is a blunt instrument, a magnificent club that has pummels our nation’s enemies into submission.  But the Marines are America’s rapier, a razor sharp weapon of war that has never been bested and never will be.  For over two centuries, the United States Marine Corps has been fighting our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.  They don’t give up.  They don’t quit.  There’s no word for retreat in a Marine’s vocabulary.  And they are making history even today in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere.

November 10th is the Corps’ 234th birthday.  With the indulgence of my Devil Dog brethren, here is this Army veteran’s countdown of the Top Ten Marine Corp movies: (more…)