| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Stan Shaw | ... |
Tyrone Washington
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| Andrew Stevens | ... |
Billy Ray Pike
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James Canning | ... |
Alvin Foster
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| Michael Lembeck | ... |
Vinnie Fazio
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| Craig Wasson | ... |
Dave Bisbee
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Scott Hylands | ... |
Captain Collins
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James Whitmore Jr. | ... |
Lieutenant Archer
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| Noble Willingham | ... |
Sergeant Curry
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| R. Lee Ermey | ... |
Sergeant Loyce
(as Lee Ermey)
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Santos Morales | ... |
Sergeant Aquilla
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Drew Michaels | ... |
Colonel Metcalfe
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Karen Hilger | ... |
Betsy
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Peggy O'Neal | ... |
Nancy Bisbee
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Claude Wilson | ... |
Roy Foster
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Chuck Doherty | ... |
George Pike
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This war drama (which prefigures the later "Full Metal Jacket") follows the lives of five young Marine inductees from their training in boot camp in 1967 through a tour in Vietnam in 1968 that quickly devolves into a hellish nightmare. Disheartened by futile combat, appalled by the corruption of their South Vietnamese ally, and constantly endangered by the incompetence of their own company commander, the young men find a possible way out of the war. They are told that if they can defeat a rival soccer team, they can spend the rest of their tour playing exhibition games behind the lines. But as they might have predicted, nothing in Vietnam is as simple as it seems. Written by Tom Hockersmith <[email protected]>
I have seen comments that this movie doesn't show the Vietnam war the way it was. I strongly disagree -- I think this movie tells it like it was: A war of politics, greed, drug abuse, and general mayhem. My only gripe regarding this movie is the short sightedness of the company that owns the rights not to release it on DVD, and a special remastered DTS/Dolby Digital version at that.