Hamburger Hill

While archiving my old video tapes, I sometimes come across a film which while not exactly "lost" to the post-DVD age (this one in particular can be watched in its entirety online), still elicits some visceral reaction for me when I re-watch it. I'll justify this post by saying the film may not be lost, but its contextual message has been.

 

Hamburger Hill

United States – 1987

Director – John Irvin

Artisan Home Entertainment, 1999, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 34 minutes

Hamburger Hill was released hot on the heels of Platoon, and together I would say they are the core of one particular tributary of the United States’ post-Vietnam catharsis. While Platoon was written and directed by a Vietnam veteran, Hamburger Hill was written and produced by one, James Carabatsos, so both films carry the tangible weight of authenticity. Hamburger Hill has an advantage when it comes to history because it is based on an actual battle that took place in 1969, but as we should know, a basis in history doesn’t necessarily equate to “truth” because historical memory is individual.

Both films are the cornerstones of a cynical individualist reappraisal of the war. Their primary concern is with the lives of a small unit of men, a platoon, a company, or in this case a squad whom they take great pains to humanize and package as a representative cross-section of U.S. society. In Platoon, director/writer Oliver Stone shows that war amplifies human emotion and can lead to discoveries about what it means to be human. Without analyzing Platoon too much I will say that Hamburger Hill diverges in a very important way in its treatment of the affects of war on its protagonists. Both films point out the tremendous waste of life and ability, the “human capital” that comprises the protagonist group, but Hamburger Hill makes an entirely different claim about how it affects them.

In Hamburger Hill, the characters are subject to assault from several directions. First the internal differences of their group results in frequent hostility and tension when they are out of combat. Second, the pointlessness and futility of the war they are compelled to fight by The State leaves them powerless over their own lives. Finally, they are subject to very real physical violence from an enemy they don’t really know and rarely see. Importantly it is their common identity as victims of the second two that enables the group to pull together and overcome their internal conflicts when in combat. Unlike Platoon which still maintains a diversity of sympathies among the main characters, some of them empathetic and others not, Hamburger Hill’s characters are universally “good guys.”

It should not be forgotten that people who are otherwise dissimilar or disassociated can in fact pull together when faced with a crisis or threat to a broader shared identity. This is the type of group identity used to fuel nationalistic and imperialistic endeavors like the Vietnam War. But Hamburger Hill’s demographic is too carefully constructed and when threatened, too cohesive to be taken merely at face value. In that case, the emphasis on unity in the teeth of threat suggests something more. It asserts that violence enables camaraderie and group harmony for the men of the film, our representative sample of society. It is only through the experience and expression of violence that they come together. Because we typically see cooperation as a natural social good, the message implicit in Hamburger Hill’s narrative is that violence in the name of nationalism is beneficial for the cohesion and unity of the group. Thus by bringing men together, violence performs a “good” for society and is a natural expression of identity rather than the creation of political ambition.

This isn’t terribly out of the ordinary, such messages are an often used, and frequently successful political tool as evidenced by the current U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (The latter of which now holds the distinction of having lasted longer than Vietnam). What is out of the ordinary about Hamburger Hill’s assertion of it is that it comes over ten years after the Vietnam War caused a tremendous rift rather than a fuzzy national unity in U.S. culture and society.

While Hamburger Hill remains one of the better films about the war largely due to its carefully constructed “authenticity”, it is an even better example of how bias and subjective experience inform historical memory.

 Poster or VHS box from Movie Poster Database which does not offer high resolution images for free.

  Poster from MovieGoods which does.

Japanese and Thai posters from IMPAwards and MovieGoods respectively.

Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

Invasion USA

United States – 1985

Director – Joseph Zito

MGM/UA Home Video, 1985, VHS (Oversize Box!)

Clogged with a veritable host of 80’s action standbys like Billy Drago (who returned to meance Norris at least 3 other times), Invasion USA is one of the first Norris Brothers team-up films with Aaron scripting. (soon he would direct too, and oh boy, watch out) But here, hot on the heels of Norris breakthrough film Missing In Action, director Zito (also director of Friday the 13th: The Final Nighmare) has returned to grace another film with extremely senseless violence and glossy hyperbolic Americana. If you were a young boy in the 80’s you probably have fond memories of this film. I don’t, my parents were hippies and I didn’t get to watch violent movies until I was an adult. My fond Invasion USA memories are freshly fucking minted.

Some Cuban refugees in a set-dressed “shabby” boat drift about on the sea while a small child whines in Spanish. (thankfully this plot-critical dialogue is subtitled or I would have been totally fucking lost) Spotted by some American Coast Guard sailor-boys led by Richard Lynch, who no sooner greet them and welcome them to freedom than cut loose with a barrage of automatic weapons mowing them all down. Turns out the sailors are actually Soviet commandos after some drugs under the deck of the boat - and Bang! I get the feeling that’s how the entirety of this movie is going to play out, no fluff, all snuff.

Cut to a shot of quasi shirtless Chuck effin’ Norris driving a speeding air-boat through the Everglades, hair streaming back. Rostov, the clammy, skin crawlingly creepy Lynch, is as ruthless and self serving as backswamp macho man Matt Hunter (Norris) is helpful, assisting his hillbilly neighbor John Eagle with gator wrasslin’ and accepting Eagle’s offer of a freshly boiled frog dinner with a grumbled “I’m getting sick of frogs.”
“The Company” (we’ll leave that one up to you to figure out) comes to recruit Hunter for another mission, to take out Rostov, Hunter’s old Cold War opposite, but Hunter bitterly refuses and cuts logs with a chainsaw at his swampy retreat instead. Shortly after he smashes a bunch of faces in, that’s exactly where an equally bitter Rostov finds him. Explosions erupt killing John Eagle, but sparing Hunter himself of course, and reopening a festering grudge that he must obey.

Moments later, Rostov’s Soviet terrorist legions are storming up the beaches of Florida armed almost exclusively with American equipment and weapons. Wasting no time they instantly begin arbitrarily rocketing the homes of pasty American nuclear-families and attacking all the symbols of American freedom; churches and shopping malls. After charging like predatory insects into a fleet of waiting trucks, the Red Horde instantly distributes cells of perfectly coordinated guerillas across the continental 48, and a little later that night a nationwide wave of unfettered chaos and unrest erupts, leaving the civil authorities to bumble around and look confused. Hunter meanwhile (and I have to say I love the subtle irony in that name) is working his own brand of subtle tactics, bashing heads at the local biker bars and trading base insults and measured and blunt one-liners with fellow jaded ex-mercenaries.
“Where’s Rostov?”
-SMASH!
“Where’s Rostov?
-SMASH!
Ad nauseum, ad infinitum.


Luckily for Hunter, even though the entire United States is under siege, Rostov has cleverly decided to keep his dirty Commie headquarters right down the street, and every time the filthy reds pop up with a clever scheme to overthrow capitalist social order, like putting a magnet bomb on the side of a school bus, Matt Hunter is there in his big truck to deter them at top speed and full auto and with equally reckless disregard for human life. (except that he’s a god fearing Christian so in his case they’re just collateral damage.) Hunter just doesn’t quit, but even all of his impeccable timing, perfect aim, and creepily rigid coppery cascading mullet-mane can’t keep him safe from the Feds who finally bust his muscly vigilante ass.

At last, Rostov has his chance and orders his army to storm the jail and eliminate Hunter once and for all. Leave it to those dumb subhuman Commies to fall for an old trick like that. And Rostov? Well that guy’s no smarter than his towheaded lackeys, a dude like Hunter, and I do mean dude, isn’t going to walk away without administering a little personal bearded bayou bad-boy beating, the long drawn out all American way.
John Eagle boiled the tastiest frogs in the swamp you ungracious Communistical savage, and somebodys gots’ta pay! Throw the fuggin’ truck in 4-wheel-drive and lets go meat-and-potatoes Commie stompin’. The thoroughly gnawed bone of action genre meat, roasted, boiled down to its basest potent essence and glazed with the rustic golden sauce that is Chuck Norris.

Watch the Invasion USA trailer at CultTrailers.

It might be easy since they have the same plot, but don't confuse this with the 1952 film with the same name.

Some alternate covers, the first for the novelization (!), the second, Hungarian VHS, and the third, the poster that later remained the VHS art and also in modified version the DVD cover art.