Mel Gibson
Madeleine Stowe
Sam Elliott
Greg Kinnear
Chris Klein
Keri Russell
Barry Pepper
:: PLOT ::
A French unit is on patrol in Vietnam in 1954, during the First Indochina War. The unit is suddenly ambushed by Viet Minh forces, who kill the officers. Although the French soldiers kill many Viet Minh, the unit is soon overrun. Nguyen Huu An (Don Duong) orders the execution of all surviving French soldiers, to discourage further French involvement in Vietnam.Eleven years later, the United States had entered the Vietnam War. U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore (Mel Gibson) is depicted as dedicated and deeply committed to training troops under his command (the 7th Cavalry Regiment), who are preparing for deployment to Vietnam. He is disquieted because the 7th Cavalry regiment was the unit commanded by General George Custer in the 19th Century when he and his men were slaughtered at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Moore is also dismayed because President Lyndon B. Johnson has decreed that the war will be fought "on the cheap", without declaring it a national emergency. As a result, Moore believes he will be deprived of his oldest, best-trained soldiers (a formal declaration of war would have meant mobilization and extension of the terms of enlistment for volunteer soldiers) - about 25% of his battalion - just prior to shipping out for Vietnam.