Film Analysis: The Green Berets By John Wayne

The movie The Green Berets starring John Wayne was directed and written by him and Ray Kellogg in 1968. The film is about a group of Green Berets who are led by Colonel Mike Kirby, played by John Wayne, along with a skeptical journalist who go into south Vietnam to help with humanitarian effects and to stop the spread of Communism from the north Vietnamnese people. George Beckworth, the skeptical journalist, comes along with the Colonel and his group of special forces to see if these is a need for American soldiers to intervene in Vietnam’s Civil War. This film was influenced by American politics because it was designed to change the public’s opinion on an unpopular war and vetern. According to Alex von Tunzelmann, this movie was made “during …show more content…
John Wayne wanted to accomplish this by showing the good of the American soldiers who helped the sick and children while dealing with the ungrateful south Vietnamese people. The soldiers were also shown in this film as dealing with an ultimate evil in the north Vietnamese people. John Wayne and ultimately the people at the Pentagon who okayed the film did not seem interested in showing the true facts of the actions of the American soldiers. This movie did not accomplish its goal to change the American’s minds of the war and eventually led to more movies in the 1970’s that were determined to show the military’s bad side rather than as the protectors and do-gooders that John Wayne showed. The politics of the late 1960’s did impact this movie and shaped the idea of the American identity because the filmmakers wanted to recapture that image of America being the protector and the stopper of evil. Many people in the public were finding out that the country had went to war based on a lie called the Gulf of Tonkin even where according to Jesse Greenspan …show more content…
The film was a ploy to try to convince the American people to support a war that was not popular with unpopular veterans. The politics that influenced the filmmakers in this film, were of those that try to recapture the image of America as the protector and the country to stop evil. This film was not able to accomplish any of this due to the fact that the public at this time was beginning to realize this war was not as clear as the movie tried to make it seem and that is was not as simple as a good versus evil fight. The movie also neglected to show the evils that the American soldiers were actually committing and this further alienated the people from the film and the idea behind the