BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

From the Chicago Tribune Review:

In "First Blood," Sylvester Stallone's Rambo seethed about "all those maggots" who lined up at the airport to spit on him upon returning from the war he wasn't allowed to win. The public bought it.

Without disrespecting the real-world Vietnam vets who couldn't get the time of day from their country after coming home, the absorbing new documentary "Sir! No Sir!" honors those who fought, then questioned the morality of that fight, then joined the national protest. David Zeiger's film is straightforward in terms of technique. News footage from the 1960s and early 1970s connects the talking-heads interviews with the primary subjects, and the whole project has an unassuming, coffeehouse air to it. It's appropriate: The director spent part of the Vietnam War era in and around an off-base coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas, near Ft. Hood, named the Oleo Strut (after a helicopter shock absorber).

There and at many other such places, vets gathered, organized underground newsletter projects, dreamed up revolts small and large. Not all ex-military figures interviewed in "Sir! No Sir!" fought in the first place. Louis Font, considered the first-ever West Point graduate to refuse to fight, says on camera that he could not support "a war of aggression." Neither Font nor Zeiger draw obvious parallels to the morality of the nation's current war of aggression. No need.

Pentagon estimates cite more than 500,000 cases of desertion during the Vietnam War. "Sir! No Sir!" reminds us that while that number was high, hundreds, even thousands of combat vets going public with their disgust and outage was no less staggering. Late in the film, a surprising assertion comes from sociologist Jerry Lembcke, a vet who wrote a book ("The Spitting Image") in which he claims to have found no recorded instances of hippies (or whomever) spitting on returning vets--the Rambo business. While "none" sounds as dubious as "countless," this much is clear: Those who control the image flow and shape the myths control the war itself. At least for a while.

From the Los Angeles Times review:

The soldiers' antiwar movement soon spawned off-base coffeehouses in military towns, such as the Oleo Strut outside Ft. Hood, Texas, as well as underground newspapers that soon numbered more than 200. It also spawned a cabaret tour called the FTA Show (for Free the Army or something more profane), a kind of anti-Bob Hope tour that starred Jane Fonda, whose son, actor Troy Garity, is this film's narrator.

As "Sir! No Sir!" points out, the sheer statistics of soldier resistance are impressive. The Pentagon reported 503,926 "incidents of desertion" between 1966 and 1971, 1,400 active duty soldiers signed a New York Times antiwar ad, and incidents of fragging, the intentional shooting of officers, became noticeable. All of this culminated in the Winter Soldier Investigation hearings and the sight of veterans throwing their medals onto the steps of the Capitol.

One of "Sir! No Sir!'s" most interesting points is how the vital partnership between the peace movement and disgruntled soldiers has fallen from view, replaced in the popular imagination with the notion of peaceniks spitting on Vietnam veterans, something that sociologist Jerry Lembcke, author of "The Spitting Image," says likely never happened.

Despite his longtime interest, filmmaker Zeiger despaired of ever getting this story on film, until the post-Sept. 11 world made the conduct of American soldiers during wartime suddenly a hot topic. We may never recapture the spirit of the 1960s, but watching "Sir! No Sir!" should get us away from the idea that opposing a war means any disrespect to the troops. It wasn't that way in Vietnam, and it's not that way now.

From the producers:

In the 1960�s an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn�t take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile. And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services. Yet today few people know about the GI movement against the war in Vietnam.

The heart and soul of Sir! No Sir! is found in the individuals who�s stories it tells. A few are:

Greg Payton, an African-American, imprisoned at Long Binh Jail for refusing to fight, who was part of the uprising there.
Dave Cline, wounded three times in Vietnam and antiwar activist at Ft. Hood, the site of some of the staunchest resistance to the war and racism.
Keith Mather, jailed in the Presidio for publicly refusing orders to go to Vietnam and a leader of the Presidio 27 mutiny.
Dr. Howard Levy, jailed three years for refusing to train Special Forces troops.
Navy nurse Susan Schnall, jailed for dropping leaflets from an airplane onto the Presidio army base.
Terry Whitmore, a highly-decorated combat veteran who deserted to Sweden.
Members of �WORMS� (We Openly Resist Military Stupidity), Air Force linguists stationed in Asia who went on strike during the 1972 Christmas bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong.
And many more of the thousands of GIs who, during what was the worst time in their lives, created something new, dynamic and groundbreaking.


BUZZFLASH REVIEWS