Review of Sir! No Sir! (2005) by V H — 13 Jun 2006

According to this documentary, there was a huge anti-war movement during the Vietnam War made up of the soldiers themselves. The ones stationed in the U.S. demonstrated at protest rallies and published underground newspapers. The ones in Vietnam refused to go out on patrol and threw grenades into the tents of their own officers. According to the Pentagon, there were over 500,000 "incidents of desertion" between 1966 and 1971.

This movie is mostly comprised of interviews with a smattering of men and women who took part in the protests and were subsequently jailed. They'd all come to the conclusion that the war was immoral based on the atrocities they'd witnessed in Vietnam. There are also a bunch of clips of Jane Fonda both during the war on her FTA ("Free" the Army) tour [color=black][font=Tahoma]?[/font][/color] the evil twin of Bob Hope's USO roadshow [color=black][font=Tahoma]?[/font][/color] and now, looking much older and talking about how cool things were back then. No sightings of 80s legwarmer-clad, workout video Jane.

Despite the fact that I'm very interested in the whole Vietnam-era protest movement culture and that much of the information presented here was brand new to me, this movie never really grabbed me. I think part of the problem is that my natural skepticism kept kicking in [color=black][font=Tahoma]?[/font][/color] if the GI protest movement was really as widespread as this movie would have us believe, why are we just hearing about it now, over 30 years after the war ended?

The other problem is that regardless of how interesting the topic may be, just watching one guy after another drone on about his experiences during the war is enough to lull a person to sleep after a while. And that person would be me. "Blah blah blah Vietnam"...ZZzzzz. I couldn't have been out for more than a minute or two when I was awakened by somebody's cell phone.

This film isn't without its compelling moments. After one rousing old clip in which a solder demands that we get our troops out of a whole list of foreign countries, the rest of the audience spontaneously broke into applause. All eight of them. But still. Maybe I would've clapped too if I were the clapping sort. But alas, I'm not. The people on the screen can't hear us and I'm not too keen on expressing solidarity with my fellow audience members. They can't even remember to turn off their cell phones. Completely ruined my nap.

The film could've done with a bit more footage from the Vietnam days and a bit less reminiscing but I don't imagine that very much exists. A much better movie, in my opinion [color=black][font=Tahoma]? with plenty of old footage [color=black][font=Tahoma]?[/font][/color][/font][/color] is [i]Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, [/i]which focuses on Kerry's post-Vietnam role in the peace movement. The subjects aren't exactly the same, of course, but there's quite a bit of overlap. Whereas I thought [i]Sir! No Sir![/i] was merely interesting, the Kerry film was actually quite moving. Unfortunately, I was the only person in the whole country to see it so he lost anyway. What's the use?