Countless films have been made chronicling the life of the American soldier during the Vietnam War, some profoundly moving, others just taking up space. The 1989 movie The Iron Triangle falls into the latter category, yet takes a different approach to the Vietnam story, giving us a glimpse into the psyche of the Vietnamese soldier. We enter the war on the American side, following Beau Bridges’ character Captain Keane as he leads his troops through the jungle. As he and his men get closer to their target, they are picked off one by one, and soon we meet the enemy. We are introduced to the young soldier Ho (Liem Whatley) after he kills one of Keane’s men, and we follow him into the jungle where he rejoins his unit. Ho is a young man, only 17, with high aspirations and a dream to be the greatest soldier of all.
Throughout the film he butts heads with Colonel Tuong (Haing Ngor), who despises Ho and the fact that the Captain admires him. He does all he can to prevent Ho from succeeding, and when Ho captures Keane, he claims the US soldier as his own prisoner, taking the credit from Ho, who truly deserves it. Ho decides to take matters into his own hands in order to get the recognition he deserves. He kidnaps the prisoner Keane and plans to take him to base camp as his own prisoner, in order to prove that he, and he alone, captured the American. So their journey begins, and Ho and Keane travel through the jungle together, forming a silent bond along the way. As Keane’s voice-over so eloquently tells us, “I had come to understand that on the other side of the barrel of a gun, there was a man…like me.” Thanks Keane, I couldn’t quite figure out what the moral of the story was on my own.
I get the point of the story without Beau Bridge’s telling me explicitly what he was thinking at any given moment. The first rule I learned in film school was “show don’t tell,” and The Iron Triangle breaks this rule, and not in a positive way. Just because you use a voiceover doesn’t make the film more poignant. And neither does moving music, shared looks between characters or long, drawn-out battle scenes. For a film with such poor acting, writing and structure, there sure is a high production value. The explosions are long, drawn out and abundant, and blood and gore are rampant. The Iron Triangle is just another attempt to fit into a cannon that’s already overflowing. What we learn from the film, however, is that there are Comrades on both sides of war; men with families, feelings and lives, and any one of those lives can be ended in an instant in “this crazy war.”
Bonus Features
There’s barely a menu, let alone bonus features.
"The Iron Triangle" is on sale June 6, 2011 and is rated R. Drama, War. Directed by Eric Weston. Written by Eric Weston, John A Bushelman, Larry Hilbrand. Starring Beau Billingslea, Beau Bridges, Haing Ngor, Liem Whatley.
