We Were Soldiers

We Were Soldiers is a war film set in 1965, as American involvement in Vietnam is escalating. Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore takes command of a battalion of air cavalry and leads roughly 400 soldiers into the Ia Drang Valley, a region the Vietnamese call the Valley of Death. After landing in a zone codenamed X-Ray, the Americans find themselves surrounded by a much larger enemy force. The film follows Moore and his men through the battle, while also showing the experience of the soldiers' wives back home, including Moore's wife Julie.

Randall Wallace directed and wrote the screenplay, and produced the film with Bruce Davey and Stephen McEveety. It was his second film as director, following The Man in the Iron Mask in 1998; he went on to direct Secretariat and Heaven Is for Real. Mel Gibson plays Hal Moore, with Madeleine Stowe as Julie Moore, Greg Kinnear as Major Bruce Crandall, Sam Elliott as Sergeant Major Basil Plumley, and Chris Klein and Keri Russell as Jack and Barbara Geoghegan.

Released in March 2002, the film runs 138 minutes. Made for 75 million dollars, it earned about 115 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2 from around 159,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.1 from roughly 2,367 votes. A critics' rating of 6.5 from 144 reviews places it slightly below the audience scores.