Go Tell the Spartans

Moving from the home front - and tentative or oblique treatments of Vietnam - towards confrontation with the action, American cinema was gradually extricating itself from a position of silent complicity and stuttering out the sort of moralistic mush that permeates Go Tell the Spartans, one of the first 'platoon movies' of Vietnam. Post's film is fundamentally that old post-World War II standby, the anti-war-movie, a second generation offspring of the conscience-stricken cavalry movie. It's brought up to date to the extent that our human/wise/ rebellious hero (Lancaster - count his speeches) can die with a final exclamation of 'Oh, shit!' - an apt summation of a film that parades characters and quotes expressly included to be dismissed with a self-satisfied cynical shrug. Message-mongering for morons.