84 MOPIC CHARLIE
A film review by Larry Hettinger
Copyright 1989 Larry Hettinger
If you are looking for a movie that offers something different than the usual cinema treatment of the war in Vietnam, you are going to be disappointed with 84 MOPIC CHARLIE. First of all, the movie should be called 84 MUMBLE CHARLIE. Throughout most of the first half of the movie the dialogue is indecipherable, and in the second half it is only somewhat more understandable because the characters spend most of their time yelling.
This movie contributes nothing to our understanding of this war. There is absolutely no topic dealt with that was not better treated in films such as PLATOON, APOCALYPSE NOW, or THE DEER HUNTER. The only novelty of this film was the audience reaction to the dark humor of the film which, to give the film maker the benefit of the doubt, I don't think was meant to elicit the disturbing laughter it in fact did (e.g., "he's so tough he'd eat the boogers out of a dead man's nose") Har, har, har.
One by one the thinly developed characters in this movie get knocked off by the VC right up to the end. As with all American films about Vietnam, 84 MOPIC CHARLIE gives us no clue at all about what makes Charlie tick. We have no idea why the North Vietnamese fight the Americans. Perhaps this might offer American film makers a new approach to the topic of Vietnam. The ground covered by 84 MOPIC CHARLIE has already been covered many times.
Larry Hettinger hettinger@krypton.arc.nasa.gov
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