The Siege of Firebase Gloria (

1989

) ½

The Tet Offensive was, as our charming narrator Sargeant Major Hafner puts it, “The neatest hat trick of the war.” The American public had believed that the war in Vietnam was as good as won, thanks to the usual patriotic propaganda vomited out by the military-industrial complex and the useful idiots in the press. This illusion was utterly shattered when tens of thousands of heavily armed guerillas flooded the countryside and brought the fight to the gates of the US embassy. Suddenly, the same talking heads that had played cheerleaders for the invasion declared the war “unwinnable.”

Of course, the thing is, that while the Tet Offensive may have been an impressive propaganda coup, it was far from a sound military strategy. Taking 100,000 casualties in three months while fighting a defensive war of attrition is the last thing that you should do. Of course, the North Vietnamese had plenty of fight left in them, but in the months and years after the offensive, the ability to wage war was significantly blunted, particularly among the Viet Cong guerillas that did the bulk of the fighting during the surprise attack. Indeed, the offensive might have proven to be the undoing of the North Vietnamese in the war, were it not for the way it played on American psychology. Americans are isolationists by nature, and though we have been bombarded by imperialist propaganda for the better part of a century, this nature still shows through. The American people were willing to accept a war in Vietnam, a country that meant nothing to most of them, provided it was a short and cheap affair. The Tet Offensive made it look like the war in Vietnam would drag on into the distant future, an endless miserable quagmire. Nobody outside of the arms dealers and war criminals setting public policy wanted to spend years fighting in some godforsaken jungle.

Today’s movie is about this pivotal moment in history, but it only touches briefly on the high-level strategic situation. Rather, as the title would suggest, The Siege of Firebase Gloria is about a single moment in the Tet Offensive as an army of Viet Cong militia besiege and attempt to storm a remote American firebase. Fortunately, the film doesn’t expect the viewer to have an intimate knowledge of the Vietnam War and will occasionally pull away from the immediate action to give the viewer insights into the larger picture of the war either through Hafner’s narration or the occasional jump to other character’s perspective in the backlines. It adds an element of verisimilitude, that makes the main characters feel like they are grounded in a larger and more complex world.

The film follows a squadron of American marines, led by the aforementioned Sargeant Major Hafner, patrolling the Vietnamese hinterland when they discover evidence of a huge military build-up despite the looming truce. The marines hustle to the nearest Forward Operating Base and discover that it is a poorly defended shit show, with a commander who walks around naked and is so strung out on drugs that he’s practically worthless. Anticipating an attack that will get the base overrun and everyone massacred, Hafner takes matters into his own hands and launches a de facto coup. However, even with the bum in command of Firebase Gloria out of the way, the situation still looks dire, and with the Tet Offensive hitting the entire countryside all at once Hafner and his boys can’t expect much in the way of reinforcements.

American movies about the Vietnam War, naturally tend to focus on the American experience in the conflict. Between Platoon (1986), Apocalypse Now (1979), and Full Metal Jacket (1987), the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) or the Viet Cong (VC) have only a handful of lines (usually in Vietnamese without the benefit of subtitles). They are treated almost like an elemental threat, a natural extension of the hostile jungle. Some commentators have tried to argue that this is just an extension of American racism and self-absorption but that seems ridiculous on the face of it. Of course, American filmmakers are going to be most interested in the struggles of their countrymen. You wouldn't complain that most Chinese films about WWII are from the perspective of Chinese soldiers instead of the Japanese invaders, so why should you expect a completely different standard from the Americans? Still, it would be nice if there was a film that acknowledged that both sides of the conflict were made up of human beings with their own dreams, struggles, and triumphs. Fortunately, we have a sleazy exploitation film from the guy that directed BMX Bandits (1983) and Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996), that does just that.

No, I'm not kidding either. In a remarkable moment, the VC commander along with one of his officers, scouts out the firebase in preparation for the upcoming assault. They note the base's defenses and manpower first, but then take a moment to muse more abstractly about their situation. The commander lays on his back, his hands tucked under his head like a schoolboy searching for shapes in the clouds. He reflects briefly on how the Tet Offensive is bound to be the end for the VC, as no matter how many victories they win or how many Americans they kill, they will be bled white in the process. The brass in Hanoi has little use for an independent militia group and would be happy if the VC were annihilated along with the Americans. As it turns out, things were FUBAR on the other side of the frontlines too.

Amusingly, the VC commander’s complaints about Hanoi mirror Hafner’s own disparaging remarks about his overseers in Saigon. When he radios into HQ to tell them about a probable offensive, they tell him to sit down and shut up. He muses that “Headquarters still didn't buy MY analysis of the situation. Hell, they had ‘experts’ sitting in air-conditioned offices in Saigon who understood the war better than anyone in the front line. We had asked for ammunition and reinforcements. What we got was the mail run, a few cases of beer, and a VD film... There were times when we all wondered whether Headquarters was fighting the same war.” While the American leadership seems to be more incompotent, and the Vietnamese leadership more insidious, both are utterly indifferent to the suffering of their own soldiers.

It's not just this moment either, throughout the entire film we are constantly cutting back to the VC officers and getting moments that not only explain their actions but humanize them. In another scene, the commander chastises his subordinate in charge of the mortar pits “your mortars couldn't hit my grandma's fat ass!” Later when the VC mortars zero in on the American positions, the subordinate jokingly asks his commander “Are you still sure your grandma's ass is safe?” Sure, the VCs don't get as much screen time as the Americans, but what time they do reinforces the impression of them as real human beings. You cheer for them even as you realize this means the characters you care about on the other side are getting lit up.

It's all the stranger that this movie would be the American Vietnam War movie that would most humanize the forces of North Vietnam because it is bedecked in so much blood and gore that it would be easy to mistake it for a horror film. It kicks off right from the start when Sargent Major Hafner and his squad visit a formerly friendly village, to find that it has been attacked by the VC. Evidently, the VCs weren't in the mood for taking prisoners, so they massacred every inhabitant and put their heads on pikes like they were impersonating Vlad Tepes. The gore isn't going to let up either, apparently, a young Steven Spielberg was somewhere in the audience taking notes because the film even features footage of a real amputee crawling on the ground moaning in pain and made up to look like he's just been maimed by mortar fire. The same technique that Spielberg would use to great effect in his D-Day scenes in Saving Private Ryan (1998). To top it all off, toward the end of the movie Hafner makes an impassioned speech to his men to keep their guard up and don’t get careless while holding the severed head of an American soldier who slipped up and let his guard down just long enough for Charlie to take him by surprise.

There’s also a refreshing tendency in The Siege of Firebase Gloria to acknowledge the common inhumanity of both sides, even as it dwells on their shared humanity. The Vietnamese take schoolgirls, wrap them up in dynamite and send them on suicidal seduce-and-destroy missions against the American troops. When remote villages side with the Americans the VCs have no scruples about coming in once the Americans are out of sight and massacring every man woman and child. The Americans, for their part, are little better. They may not have teen girls to turn into jihadists, so they settle for shooting wounded enemy soldiers after each fresh assault on the firebase. Yet despite their cruelty, neither side is depicted as monstrous, they’re just regular men stuck in a hellish situation. Mercy and chivalry are luxuries that neither side can afford. It’s a neat trick that The Siege of Firebase Gloria makes both sides sympathetic and despicable in turn.

R. Lee Ermey, most famous for his turn as the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket (1987), is a rare sight in a leading role. I guess it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Emery can portray a marine NCO so convincingly, as he was not only an actual marine NCO but was even serving in Vietnam at about the time this movie takes place. Sure, he’s a bit grayer and paunchier than I would expect for a soldier in the field, but his attitude and inflections are perfect. The script here serves him well, and never asks more than the character or the actor playing him can reasonably deliver. Hafner’s second-in-command, Joseph L. Di Nardo, is less authentic than his commanding officer, but he’s given by far the more interesting emotional plot lines. Di Nardo is the loose cannon, the berserker savage in modern fatigues that takes a special delight in slaughtering enemy wounded. He has his reasons, of course, but he’s still a far sight from sympathetic.

The biggest downside here is the action scenes, which are uniformly repetitive and perfunctory. It’s a shame, as the titular siege is what drives the plot and gives purpose to the characters, and consequently, the dull action sequences (particularly those at the end of the film) cast a negative light on all the good that has come before. Imagine watching Zulu (1964) and being totally engrossed for most of the film’s duration only to spend the last 20 minutes checking your watch and yawning. It doesn’t spoil the movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it does make me momentarily disappointed as I imagine how great this film could have been.