Warner Home Video has released John Wayne's
The Green Berets on Blu-ray. Wayne stirred up a hornet's nest among his political opponents when he released the film in 1968 at the height of the protest movement against the Vietnam War. After his 1966 visit to Vietnam to bolster the spirits of American troops, the Duke wanted to make a statement in support of the U.S. involvement in the war. He felt so strongly about the subject that he directed the movie as well as starred in it. (Ray Kellogg directed most of the major action scenes.)
The film remains one of only two films the Duke directed, the other being his 1960 epic The Alamo. Predictably, the movie caused a firestorm of protest, as it was released just when calls for withdrawing from the conflict were picking up steam. Most critics wrote the film off as hopelessly inept from an artistic standpoint. Indeed, Wayne employed every cliche imaginable and the script seemed to have been left on a shelf since the WWII era. There is the lovable company scrounger (Jim Hutton) who unofficially adopts a doe-eyed orphan kid and other key characters are actually named Kowalski and Muldoon.Wayne does address the political controversies of the era, but the opposing viewpoint of the war is seen through diatribes of another cliched character, a liberal reporter played by David Janssen. Wayne's simplistic outlook on the conflict is represented by his answer to Janssen's complaint that due process of law is not being followed. Wayne's Colonel Kirby tells him, "Out here, due process is a bullet."