During a patrol, Courcey spots a group of nine Vietnamese women and children fishing along the small river that runs through the deserted village, despite intelligence that there are no civilians said to live in the area. Today, the quote lives on in pop culture, as the 300 graphic novel and movie have given it new life, without the irony. During the early 1960s, U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam discover the same challenges that plagued the French army in Indochina ten years prior. The film closes with the title card which reads '1964'. Rogue intelligence agents, right-wing politicians, greedy capitalists, and free-lance assassins plot and carry out the JFK assassination in this speculative agitprop. Spoiler Warning: below is a summary of the entire film. That evening, Barker and Courcey are forced to destroy all of the arms and equipment left behind and then lead the group on the road departing the village, as friendly artillery fire begins raining down on the area. The next morning, Barker travels to Saigon to meet with Colonel Minh, the military chief of the region, and tries to persuade Minh to send reinforcements of at least 300 ARVN troops to Muc Wa. [10], Though the film had a limited release in the United States, critics, especially those opposed to the Vietnam War, praised it: "In sure, swift strokes," wrote Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in the Saturday Review, "it shows the irrelevance of the American presence in Vietnam, the corruption wrought by that irrelevance, and the fortuity, cruelty, and waste of an irrelevant war." This is one of Lancaster's best performances: embittered, a cog in the military juggernaut, this good man foresees the killing waste to come.[11]. The VC points his rifle at Courcey before dropping it out of exhaustion. The screenplay by Wendell Mayes was shopped around for years with various older leading men such as Robert Mitchum, William Holden and Paul Newman offered the role of Major Asa Barker. One of which is a statue of King Leonidas I, portrayed as bearing a spear, and shield. I can still see a Marine in khaki Burmuda shorts, boots and a muted Aloha shirt with a Thompson slung over his shoulder and a bush hat on his head. But the Vietnamese teenage girl that Courcey befriended gets away and informs the Viet Cong scouts of the Americans plans to withdraw, thus revealing that she and all of the other civilians were in fact Viet Cong supporters, as Cowboy predicted. Off The Shelf – Episode 90 – New Blu-ray and DVD Releases for Tuesday, May 17th 2016, DVD Review: "The Dain Curse" (1978) Starring James Coburn; Special Edition From Scorpion. This FAQ is empty. More broadly, Roger Grooms in the Cincinnati Enquirer judged it to be "one of the noblest films, ever, about men in crisis.". Check out some of the IMDb editors' favorites movies and shows to round out your Watchlist. The younger actors cast were Marc Singer as infantry Captain Al Olivetti, a gung-ho career officer seeking to earn the Combat Infantryman Badge, and Craig Wasson as Corporal Courcey, the idealistic college-educated draftee who wants to see what a real war is like. Courcey, a demolitions expert who extended his enlistment by six months to serve in Vietnam. Written by Add the first question. The idealistic Courcey refuses to leave the wounded, so Barker decides to stay behind to help evacuate the remaining South Vietnamese troops and militiamen overland to safety. [7] Calling the script brilliant, Lancaster agreed to star in it and when the 31-day production budget ran short, he paid $150,000 to complete it. It was released to DVD by HBO Home Video on August 30, 2005[9] and on Limited Edition Blu-Ray by Scorpion Releasing in June 2016. Major Barker and his executive officer, the career-orientated Captain Olivetti, receive four replacement troops. At the same time, Barker is wounded by enemy fire and dies after suffering an apparent heart attack as the battle continues. [2] The graves inspired the film's title, taken from Simonides's epitaph to the three hundred soldiers who died fighting Persian invaders at Thermopylae, Greece: "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.". He wakes up in the morning to find that everyone else is dead and the soldiers, including Barker, are stripped of their fatigues. It's July 1964 in the period when American troops were euphemistically termed "military advisors" in Vietnam. ", "Go Tell the Spartans (1978) - Overview - TCM.com", "GO TELL THE SPARTANS (1978 / 1500 EDITION) -- SCREEN ARCHIVES ENTERTAINMENT", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Go_Tell_the_Spartans&oldid=984644672, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 21 October 2020, at 07:41. Go Tell the Spartans Roger Ebert January 01, 1978. The only film close to it is The Quiet American but that is more the diplomatic and press end of things. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Several curse words are in the report. 10 of 13 people found this review helpful. During the early 1960s, U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam discover the same challenges that plagued the French army in Indochina ten years prior. The Vietnamese civilians that Courcey found and brought into the base camp steal several weapons and try to escape, forcing Cowboy to kill all of them. [2] The project was turned down by Paramount and 20th Century Fox.[4]. In 1954 the French lost (in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu) their war to keep their Indo-China colonies and those colonies became North and South Vietnam. Semper Fi. Synopsis But the corrupt Minh refuses, claiming that he needs the troops in Saigon to prevent a potential coup. Go tell the Spartans we obeyed their orders. "Moc Hoa" was a real Special Forces base in the, This is the second film where Lancaster was bedeviled by knee troubles. | [5], Director Ted Post persuaded Avco Embassy Pictures to produce the film on a limited budget with the film shot in Valencia, California. A unit of American military advisors in Vietnam prior to the major U.S. involvement find similarities between their helpless struggle against the Viet Cong and the doomed actions of a French unit at the same site a decade before in this bitter look at the beginnings of the Vietnam war. When they meet the show's female star attraction, they're sold. As Courcey wanders to the French grave site, he finds an enemy survivor: the wounded, one-eyed VC scout that he saw earlier. But no sooner has the group filed out than they are ambushed and surrounded by the Viet Cong, led by the civilian girl. If you've binged every available episode of the hit Disney Plus series, then we've got three picks to keep you entertained. Title: They find a shadow of a former gang and although disappointed, still try to help them escape from a vigorous Marshal. Ackley, a communications expert to garrison Muc Wa with a half French half Vietnamese interpreter/interrogation specialist called Cowboy, a hardcore squad of Hmong mercenaries and a motley mob of about 20 South Vietnamese Popular Force civilian "troops", armed with shotguns and old rifles with a sprinkling of machine guns, to attempt to create a defensible outpost at Muc Wa. Taglines Ignoring Oleonozski's warnings, Lt. Hamilton tries to rescue the man but is killed. It was re-released on September 7, 1987, and came out on video (VHS cassette) in the United States on May 13, 1992. Courcey befriends one of the teenage Vietnamese girls despite that she speaks no English and Courcey cannot speak or understand Vietnamese. This leaves Barker, Courcey, Cowboy, the Nung troops, the Old Man and his fellow South Vietnamese militiamen alone at Muc Wa. [8], Go Tell the Spartans was released in the United States on June 14, 1978. Parents Guide. Three navy men run into a shady producer who convinces them to invest into his new show. Go Tell the Spartans is a 1978 American war film directed by Ted Post, starring Burt Lancaster, and based on Daniel Ford's 1967 novel Incident at Muc Wa,[1] about U.S. Army military advisors during the early part of the Vietnam War in 1964, a time when Ford was a correspondent in Vietnam for The Nation. As one who was there in 1964 and early 1965, this film is so accurate it brings back things I thought were long forgotten. Hilarious internships with a miserly doctor and his young wife, a country doctor paid in kind not cash, and a quack ... See full summary ». Directed by Ted Post. The choice of film's name thus constitutes a deliberate "spoiler" by the film makers, telling anyone familiar with the source of the quote that the film's soldier characters – like the Spartans at Thermopylae – had been sent to their deaths. After the final battle, the only survivor is the willing volunteer, Courcey, whose idealism and enthusiasm for the Vietnam War has now died along with his comrades. Cpl Abraham Lincoln is a combat medic and a drug addict. View production, box office, & company info. The story was inspired by a futile special forces operation in 1964 at Tan Hoa in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, an objective that turned out to be an abandoned settlement containing only a field, an abandoned airstrip and three or four French gravestones. A unit of American military advisors in Vietnam prior to the major U.S. involvement find similarities between their helpless struggle against the Viet Cong and the doomed actions of a French unit at the same site a decade before in this bitter look at the beginnings of the Vietnam war.

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