Run Thru The Jungle, Before It Gets Flattened

I wasn't quite as excited at the prospect of watching BAT*21 as my dad was when it arrived in the mail. I like Gene Hackman and Danny Glover as actors all right, and it turned out to have Jerry Reed in it, as Glover's commanding officer, but I didn't have any particular reason to be super excited.

It's "based on a true story", which of course leaves me wondering how much of the movie is actually true. I assume they spiced up some of the dialogue, either added or subtracted some profanity. I imagine "Ham" (Hackman) did get shot down on a mission to gather information of enemy missile defenses he volunteered for. I also believe the idea of using golf terminology as code to fix Ham's location. Half my mom's family loves golf, and I wouldn't have a clue what Ham was talking about. What chance would the enemy forces have?

But did a Vietnamese kid really save him from a boobytrap on a cane bridge, prompting Ham and the kid to exchange gifts? Did Ham really have to kill some random Vietnamese man who came across Ham on his property, eating his rice? Did Danny Glover actually steal his commanding officer's helicopter to go try and rescue Ham? I could see the rescue unit as a whole making a last attempt right before the massive carpet-bombing was set to begin, but for the guy to steal a chopper on his own, when he hadn't flown one in 15 years, I don't know. Truth is stranger than fiction, I guess.

I did enjoy the back and forth between Hackman and Glover, the attempts to to keep Ham's spirits up as he gets a much closer look at war than he ever wanted. It reminded me a little of Die Hard, only with a jungle full of NVA* instead of a skyscraper full of thieves posing as terrorists. I like Jerry Reed's character a lot more than Deputy Chief Dwayne Robinson, though, largely because Reed wasn't as big an idiot.

Actually, the very end of the movie reminded me of Predator. Large section of jungle, flattened/burned out, wounded guy(s) staggering out of the haze, here comes a rescue, well, it was a rescue boat, but there was a helicopter at the very end, close enough.

* Or were they Vietcong? Some of the guys had the "black jammies" look that I think is shorthand for VC, but I figured the tanks were North Vietnamese Army.