Critical Reception
The film is most often criticized for glorifying the Vietnam War. Upon its cinema release, Chicago newspaper movie critic Roger Ebert gave the film zero stars and cited extensive use of cliches, depicting the war in terms of "cowboys and indians", and being a "heavy-handed, remarkably old-fashioned film." It currently resides on his "Most Hated" list. In The New York Times, Renata Adler wrote, "It is vile and insane. On top of that, it is dull." Oliver Stone's acclaimed anti-war film Platoon was written partially as a reaction to The Green Berets.
The war journalist John Pilger describes his reaction to the film in a 2007 speech he gave criticising the media for its coverage of the Vietnam war. "I had just come back from Vietnam, and I couldn’t believe how absurd this movie was. So I laughed out loud, and I laughed and laughed. And it wasn’t long before the atmosphere around me grew very cold. My companion, who had been a Freedom Rider in the South, said, 'Let’s get the hell out of here and run like hell.'"
Despite the poor reviews, the film went on to be a great commercial success, which Wayne attributed in part to the negative reviews from the press, which he saw as representing criticism of the war rather than the film.
Read more about this topic: The Green Berets (film)
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