RESCUE DAWN (2006) B

Here we are in Vietnam, at the beginning of the war in 1965. It's critical that we defend South Vietnam because Ho Che Minh and the Russians will take over the country and all Southeast Asia will fall to the Commies.  And god only knows what will happen then. Australia will be next. And then Bali will go with all the girls in long skirts.

A flyer is shot down on a secret mission and ends up a prisoner of these third word people . . . who are a terrible danger to us all. They are light brown skinned, have bad teeth, live in bamboo huts, eat small rations of rice and own a jungle that they have lived in for 7000 years. The story is about the pilots' escape from his primitive bamboo prison. But to me the story was more about the utter stupidity (with 20/20 hindsight) of going to war against these people and their jungle. Just imagine our tanks plowing through a jungle

The cinematography of the southeast Asia jungles and mountains is sensational and the acting is good. Brutality is painful at times.

You would have to be brain dead to not see the parallel between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Both no win situations that American politicians need to get into to win support of the center-right wing people . . . the real MACHO gang in the US who can carry AK-47s in side holsters in their pick-up trucks, and scream about the rights of the unborn.

Hopeless.