What movie most closely resembled your own military experience?

[MrScorpio]

1. Stripes


2. Full Metal Jacket


3. No Time For Sergeants


4. Private Benjamin


5. Platoon


6. Best Defense


7. McHale's Navy


8. Good Morning, Vietnam


9. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

8 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Stripes
	0 (0%)
	Full Metal Jacket
	0 (0%)
	No Time For Sergeants
	1 (13%)
	Private Benjamin
	0 (0%)
	Platoon
	0 (0%)
	Best Defense
	0 (0%)
	McHale's Navy
	0 (0%)
	Good Morning, Vietnam
	2 (25%)
	Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
	0 (0%)
	Other.
	5 (63%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[wasupaloopa]

1. I was living in Saigon for 6 months in 1967. Way too much like Good Morning

Vietnam.

Our commander told us that the lowest thing on earth was whale shit because it was at the bottom of the sea and that we were three feet lower than whale shit.

We sent sevaral of them to prison for burying equipment under asphalt to pass inspection. Also for selling our equipment for war souveniers.

[GP6971]

2. What??? No MASH? n/t

[Tikki]

12. MASH..My husband, literally, was the RADAR where he was stationed.

Tikki

[NightWatcher]

3. Falcon and the Snowman, Spygame, Breach, The Recruit.

I was not in one of the armed forces but was employed elsewhere w/in the system.

[pangaia]

4. EASY RIDER

[Leghorn21]

5. As a Marine Corps brat, it's gonna be

“The Great Santini” all the way!

[Ptah]

6. Dr. Strangelove

Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb



USAF SAC 1970-1974

[UTUSN]

7. "The Last Detail" - not the re-make/Chasers. The Jack NICHOLSON version.

Last edited Tue May 14, 2019, 11:50 AM - Edit history (2)

The ending was stunning. (Below is not the ending.)

The scene where the two Lifers and the prisoner try to get a beer in D.C. where the drinking age was 21 was priceless. The two Lifers/Shore Patrol take their armband (SP) off, with their weapons out of sight under their peacoats. Nobody in the bar (it's, like, 1PM). And the bartender (big, gruff) asks for an I.D. on the kid. And NICHOLSON goes into his NICHOLSON impersonation mode, cajoling for ONE beer. The bartender persists. NICHOLSON persists. Finally the bartender draws the line, "Look, I could lose my license!1 If you guys don't get out of here I'm going to call the Shore Patrol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1"

And it's the perfect set-up for NICHOLSON:

He slams his weapon on the bar and screams, "I *AM* the fucking Shore Patrol!!!!!!!1" And the three bozos run out a down the street laughing their fool heads off.


*********It's everything about how Navy enlisted act and made just for NICHOLSON.

[denbot]

20. Plus 1

Great movie BTW

[sarge43]

8. A mix of No Time for Sergeants and Private Benjamin n/t

[MrScorpio]

10. Funny story about No Time For Sergeants...

The first time I ever saw that movie, was when I was stationed at Osan AB, ROK.

Anyway, it was on a Friday evening when I was about to head down to the Ville, but I stopped at the Rec Center for a snack first. It was showing on the cafeteria big screen and I sat down to watch as I had my meal.

It had me cracking up so much that I stayed to watch the entire movie there and decided to skip the Ville that night.

Loved it ever since.

[sarge43]

11. I saw when it first came out.

As I found out much later, it wasn't that far from the truth, at least Air Force boot.

Hubby did some time at Osan when he was doing the Pacific Rim Grand Tour. What's the Ville?

[MrScorpio]

14. Songtan Si, the Korean town just out the front gate of base

[lastlib]

9. "Tribes"

I was too much of a hippie peacenik for the military. I told the Navy recruiter, "Sure, I'll sign up. Just send a ship over to get me." Never saw that ship........

[Recursion]

13. Jarhead (nt)

[Aristus]

16. 'Jarhead' and 'Three Kings'.

I was Army, not a Marine, but the film captured a lot of the pointless sitting around in the desert waiting for something to happen.

'Three Kings' captured pretty well the socio-political confusion surrounded the war and its aftermath. My unit was deployed to the Gulf as part of the buildup when it ws still thought that there could be mass-casualties in the ground war, and that trained replacements (especially tank crewmen, of which I was one) would be needed to plug manpower gaps in the line. We ended up not serving in combat, and instead sat around the desert doing bullshit details until we finally got a flight home.

We disliked and distrusted our Saudi allies, thinking them stragglers holding back while the Western coalition did the heavy lifting. At the time, we couldn't fathom George H.W. Bush's decision not to go all the way to Baghdad (a decision I later supported when I learned the relevant facts, and a decision that looked more and more precient in the wake of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.) But we thought the end of the war might bring some much-needed stability to the region. We were so naive...

[DashOneBravo]

17. Gardens Of Stone

[MrScorpio]

18. Were you stationed at Fort Myer?

[DashOneBravo]

31. Nope

It reminded me of what it’s like being a private in an infantry unit. With all the Mickey Mouse bullshit you endure.

[jrandom421]

19. For me,

It was "We Were Soldiers"

I wasn't in Hal Moore's unit, but I knew a few who were there at Ia Drang.

[ProudLib72]

21. It's been Red Dawn since 2016

Yep, that's my experience.

[jmowreader]

22. They will never make a movie about my military experience

I sat in a room with no windows and read my computer screen...and every so often I would split the screen in half, type up a message of a few lines and send it to my team chief to be transmitted.

It would rate somewhere between the movie "Ass" in Idiocracy ("...and that's all it was for 93 minutes. It won eight Oscars that year, including Best Screenplay.&quot and that new documentary about watching paint dry.

[Submariner]

23. Operation Petticoat

Riding diesel boats made me glad I did not get into the nuke subs. Pig boat liberty ports were full of fun.

[Shrek]

24. "An Officer and a Gentleman"

Older movie than I remembered.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084434/

[Aristus]

30. It was filmed at Fort Worden, Port Townsend, Washington.

An old coastal artillery base on Puget Sound. The set designers did an amazing job of making it look like an active Naval Officer Candidate School.

[hunter]

25. Starship Troopers, but I'm not allowed to talk about it.

In fact I've already said too much.

I hauled around Doogie Howser's kit.

[rsdsharp]

26. What a God awful movie.

The shower scene had merit, though.

[PJMcK]

27. I have no military experience

I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. I was too young for Viet Nam and then too old when President Carter reinstitute the Selective Service registrations, (my younger brother had to register although I did not).

In some ways, I wish that I had served. In adulthood, I've come to believe that our country should have some form of mandatory national service in order to make each of us better citizens. Combined with a robust civics education, our country could be better off with people who are invested in our freedoms, rights and obligations.

Had I been required to serve, I would have enlisted in the Navy. I love the sea and I love our country. In reality, I would not have been accepted into the services because I had damaged knees from playing junior high and high school football. (A subject for an entirely different post!)

I'm grateful to all of the men and women who have served our nation's military forces. They have (mostly) protected our way of life.

[underpants]

28. The first room I walked into at Ft. Knox was the room they went into in Stripes. "Catch-22"

Yep the room with all the flags. That was the first room we piled off the bus into at Knox.

Catch-22. An impossible book to make into a movie but Buck Henry was able to write the script. My Cav unit was a horrible mess. It’s the only unit I served in so that’s mt reference. I was told by people coming into that unit or those that moved on but that I’m still in touch with (mostly Facebook) “This is NOT the Army”. It was complete chaos.

[Brother Buzz]

32. Buffalo Soldiers (2001)

And totally coincidental, I was assigned to the last active unit of the 92nd Division (Buffalo Soldiers)

[DFW]

33. Adrian Cronauer (the real one) was a personal friend of mine

He would tell anyone willing to listen (and Hollywood was NOT) that the movie about him (GMVN) was NOTHING like his experience, even if he was supposed to be the film's main character.

As for me, I never wore a uniform, although my job's travel schedule would probably have made Jason Bourne go on strike for better working hours, and there are many times I would have liked to have the film character's apparent immunity from prosecution for blowing away bad guys.

[JonLP24]

35. I agree with him. Hollywood often gets it wrong at least when it comes to Iraq

They will glorify psychopaths like Chris Kyle.

[DFW]

36. I don't think most producers or directors even have realistic depictions in mind

Adrian was a soft-spoken intellectual. Robin Williams' portrayal of him was about as accurate as comparing Donald Trump to the Dalai Lama.

The only time I have heard any combat vets in recent history saying a film depiction was accurate was when some of them had seen Spielberg's depiction of the Omaha Beach landing on D-Day. Other than that, reality seems to always take a back seat to what the studio thinks will sell the most tickets. GMVN was an entertaining film, it just had very little to do with Adrian's experience.

[JonLP24]

34. Skip all of them

David Simon's Generation Kill on HBO was by far the closest all the way down to the water boxes. I was an OIF 3 veteran.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Kill_(miniseries)