bkoganbing What can you say about a war that Franz Kafka might have arranged? It's said in The Boys In Company C. The story is based on the journal of a GI played by James Canning and his four buddies who went through basic training and served as Marines. The other four are Stan Shaw, Andrew Stevens, Craig Wasson, and Michael Lembeck. The five all come from completely different backgrounds and those backgrounds play into how they come to feel as they feel about our military intervention. Not so surprising eventually they all arrive at the same conclusions.Vietnam was a whole lot like how we dealt with China except that we weren't dumb enough to get into a land war there on behalf of Chiang Kai-shek. No we went in by increments and by 1967-68 when the action of this film takes place we had no clear military objective. Our allies whom we fought for were as corrupt a bunch as you could have. Stan Shaw from the Chicago ghetto thought he was street smart and cynical and thought he'd make some crooked drug money while there. The corruption played out with a scene with South Vietnamese general leaves him appalled.There were sure enough real casualties among civilians in Vietnam. But I remember the obsession and reporting of body counts in the news back in the day. This was how we measured success and those on the ground gave them what they asked for. Scott Hylands has a great part as a captain who has really bought into the hype about that.Hylands has another obsession, soccer. He sees a soccer game as a metaphor for war and pretty soon his men pretend to buy into it including our five protagonists. But we even have corruption there as the five soon discover. All five meet different fates in the end and as the postscript explains. Not as well known as Casualties Of War or Platoon. Still The Boys In Company C can certainly lay claim to being THE Vietnam War film.

airborne60 A Vietnam movie made just a few years after the war ended has it't merit not the least because it captures the time spirit much more closely than anything made decades after. There are some goofs as in all "old" movies, for example the M-16 shots not sounding anywhere near the real. Modern movies have more realistic effects (explosion effects and bullets hitting) but the lack of perfection in this really does make this movie any less good.The acting is good and in many was better than in Full Metal Jacket which clearly was inspired by The Boys.For those being into Vietnamn war movies, this is worthwhile seeing as it was one of the very first, made close in time and was an inspiration to later movies.It also touches topics which were exploited more heavily in later movies; incompetent officers just going for body count, corruption and drug abuse. It avoids deeper digging and only very lightly touches the relations to the ARVN or racial issues. There are no explanations at all why the time (shortly before the Tet offensive)is important and why going to Khe San at that time would be fatal. But knowing your Vietnamn war history, you will know.

tristintheshyman Overall, I thought that the movie was pretty good. The comedy in the beginning was original, witty and funny. After that things start to get serious, but not too much so after they land in Vietnam. The shooting scenes are great and realistic. The acting during these parts and throughout is actually pretty good. However, in the end, they lost me. It seems that the scene wasn't quite done right. There isn't any real tension in the first half, and the scene falls flat. During the second half, they announce another stipulation for no real reason, except it seems, to liven things up. Now we have a proper moral dilemma. Then, at the end of a game a battle starts; for no particular reason except they (Vietnam) lost. The sergeant is killed without reason and at random. A random private is killed without reason. There is a lot of random shooting. This scene does not mesh very well. It seems that the team is lacking discipline in this scene, as they cry about team members lost. This did not happen earlier in the movie. It seems as though they have turned into wimps in this scene. And to top it all off, the movie leaves us at a cliffhanger, with no real resolution.

alexisdetroit I saw Boys of Company C when it came out with a buddy who was in Vietnam with me in 1968. We were both 0311s (rifleman) in a rifle platoon.For starters, recruits never had relationships or dialogues with drill instructors as portrayed in Boys. While in Vietnam I never conversed with a captain, as depicted in Boys who was the company commander; unless you were a radioman there was little need to speak directly to a captain.The soccer game in Vietnam came across as a tired movie vehicle. That is, when you run out of script throw in a sporting event for filler and a possible conclusion.Boys ranks with Heartbreak Ridge and The Siege of Firebase Gloria as war movie screenplays that should have been relegated to the REJECT pile. Whoever threw this stinker together should have been court martialed and been given the same sentence as Breaker Morant: Rule .303