Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
65
(37 sources)
65
(37 sources)
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100
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88
Chicago Sun-Times
"Black Hawk Down" was criticized because the characters seemed hard to tell apart. We Were Soldiers doesn't have that problem; in the Hollywood tradition it identifies a few key players, casts them with stars, and follows their stories. Read Full Review » -
88
ReelViews
The in-your-face style of We Were Soldiers results in a suspenseful, intense, and exhausting cinematic experience. Read Full Review » -
83
Portland Oregonian
The film's soldiers are more the mom-and-apple-pie, God-fearing lads of World War II movies than the cynical grunts of "Platoon" (1986) and "Full Metal Jacket" (1987). Read Full Review » -
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
A powerful experience, filled with dazzlingly executed action sequences that generally avoid the rock music and drugged-out conventions of "Apocalypse Now," and even exude a certain core of humanity. Read Full Review » -
80
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80
Washington Post
Gibson may get top billing, but it's Sam Elliott who steals all the scenes. As Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, a man who fires with his own .45 revolver rather than the standard M-16 rifles, he's full of hilariously colorful comments. Read Full Review » -
80
The New York Times
Like the best war movies -- and like martial literature going back to the Iliad -- it balances the dreadful, unassuageable cruelty of warfare and the valor and decency of those who fight. Read Full Review » -
80
New Times (L.A.)
It succeeds where its recent predecessor miserably fails because it demands that you suffer the dreadfulness of war from both sides. That might not make it a milestone, but it's a hell of an improvement. Read Full Review » -
80
Film Threat
This is a good film; strong, honest, strikingly photographed (by Dean Semler) and appropriately devastating. Read Full Review » -
75
Chicago Tribune
Probably the best thing you can say about We Were Soldiers is that it does justice to an awful conflict. Read Full Review » -
75
New York Daily News
We Were Soldiers works. The action is well-staged and realistic. And Gibson is a commanding presence in a role that has more shadings and stature than his usual action heroes. Read Full Review » -
75
Boston Globe
It isn't afraid to genuflect to heroes and heroism and has everything it needs to connect with the resurgence of patriotism after Sept. 11. Read Full Review » -
75
USA Today
This also is the rare combat movie that deals substantially with mourning widows on the home front. Read Full Review » -
75
Entertainment Weekly
The writer-director bestows honor -- generously, apolitically -- not only on the dead and still living American veterans who fought in Ia Drang, but also on their families, on their Vietnamese adversaries, and on the families of their adversaries too. Read Full Review » -
70
Variety
Gibson has the closest thing to a John Wayne part that anyone's played since the Duke himself rode into the sunset, and he plays it damn well. Read Full Review » -
70
Salon.com
Isn't a great movie; I'd say it's barely a good one. But it's a war movie that at least acknowledges the distinction between macho and masculinity, always putting the dignity of the latter over the bluster of the former. Read Full Review » -
70
Newsweek
A powerful and moving experience -- once it overcomes its clunky, badly written and clichéd first act. Read Full Review » -
70
Los Angeles Times
Manages to evoke a complex series of reactions. It both frustrates with its unrelenting sentimentality and impresses with the overwhelming physicality of its combat sequences. These in turn are so powerful they take on a life of their own, sending a message that is probably quite opposite to the one the filmmakers intended. Read Full Review » -
70
Slate
It's square, stiff, and in places cheesy; it's also authentically harrowing -- and blood-showered, blood-drowned. Read Full Review » -
70
Village Voice
Soldiers is righteously explicit about the damage artillery does to human flesh, and for its part, it proves relentlessly unpleasant. Read Full Review » -
70
Rolling Stone
The battle, expertly shot by Dean Semler, captures the chaos of guerrilla warfare paralleled in "Black Hawk Down" and gives the film a scarring documentary realism. Read Full Review » -
63
Charlotte Observer
Some scenes achieve dramatic greatness and emotions that reach to the heart's core. Almost as many have the tinny ring of a badly counterfeited coin. Read Full Review » -
63
Miami Herald
We Were Soldiers feels strangely irrelevant -- a well-acted, well-crafted and inconsequential visit to woefully familiar territory. Read Full Review » -
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
If the action is graphic and immediate, other aspects of the movie are inexcusably bad. Read Full Review » -
63
Philadelphia Inquirer
One admires Wallace's intentions while despairing at his execution. Yet as clumsily directed as his film is, it inspires compassion for Moore, his men and their foes. And in that, there is merit. Read Full Review » -
60
Wall Street Journal
While the movie is dreadfully clumsy or sentimental around the edges, there's no denying the strength of Mr. Gibson's performance or the power of the savage combat, a 90-minute sequence that's even more graphic than the horrific firefight in Somalia in "Black Hawk Down." Read Full Review » -
60
New York Magazine
Fitfully effective as a battle movie, and Mel Gibson does his rugged best to take center stage without seeming to. But the movie is self-righteous in a way that's frequently unseemly. Read Full Review » -
60
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Leaves all the real risks to the young warriors at Ia Drang and collects easy dividends on their bravery. In the end, it honors them by paying tribute to itself. Read Full Review » -
50
TV Guide
Who these brave men were and why they fought disappears under the usual clichés, while the astounding acts of courage that occurred at Ia Drang are lost to the dust and din. Read Full Review » -
50
LA Weekly
It was a hellish encounter, as well as a portent of the 10 years to come, and as such deserves far better than Mel Gibson's glower and writer-director Randall Wallace's guns-and-Moses platitudes. Read Full Review » -
50
Austin Chronicle
Ultimately, though, We Were Soldiers fails to bring as much to the table as it at first seems it might. Read Full Review » -
50
Baltimore Sun
The movie never generates the authority it needs to be all that it can be. Read Full Review » -
50
Chicago Reader
Though the questionable motives and bad planning of offscreen characters who far outrank Gibson make it difficult to take at face value one soldier's last words -- "I'm glad I could die for my country" -- some viewers will, which may be as the filmmakers intended. Read Full Review » -
50
The New Yorker
Yet as art this revisionist movie, grimly effective as some of it is, doesn't hold a candle to the remarkable cycle of pictures in the late seventies and the eighties which captured the discordant character of a tragic war. [11 Mar 2002, p. 92] Read Full Review » -
38
New York Post
It's a shame that the book "We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young" fell into the hands of writer-director Randall Wallace ("Braveheart"), a filmmaker who wouldn't recognize subtlety and understatement if they were to attack him in the street. Read Full Review » -
25
Christian Science Monitor
Rarely have Gibson's tears seemed more fictional than in this supposedly authentic account of a historical event that's far too tragic to merit such superficial treatment. Read Full Review »
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