156 HAMBURGER HILL
well- entrenched enemy. Between infantry assaults American warplanes drop
bombs, napalm, and white phosphorus, cratering the mountain and denuding it of
all its fo liage. In one assault, Duffy leading the charge, comes close to breaking the
enemy lines but he is killed by misdirected “friendly fire” from Huey gunships.
During lulls in the fighting, members of the platoon discuss opposition to the war
back home. Day after day, the shrinking platoon continues its assault on Hill 937
but cannot take the hill. The 10th assault happens during heavy rains, turning the
hillside into a slippery sea of mud. Gaigin and “Doc” are shot dead, and Beletsky is
injured but returns to his unit anyway. An 11th and final assault is mounted, and
the remaining enemy positions near the summit are overrun but casualties soar.
Murphy, Worcester, Motown, Bienstock, and Languilli are all killed and Lt. Eden is
seriously wounded. Stunned by the deaths of most of his friends and comrades, a
dazed Frantz is wounded during the battle. Beletsky pushes through his injuries
towards the summit. Frantz also makes it to the summit and rests alongside Beletsky
and Washburn as battle draws to a close. The final image is of Beletsky’s haunted
face as he gazes at the utter devastation below. There is constant radio chatter, but
no one replies.Reception
Released on 28 August 1987—10 months after Oliver Stone’s Platoon and just a
day after Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket ended its nine- week U.S. theatrical
run— Hamburger Hill ran for a month (widest release: 814 theaters), earning $13.8
million at the box office, a fraction of what other those other two Vietnam War
films earned. The movie’s modest commercial per for mance was likely due to a
number of factors: its being overshadowed by its power ful pre de ces sors; its lack-
ing a famous director or big- name stars; its unfashionable center- right po liti cal ori-
entation; its restrained quasi- documentary style (devoid of allegorical flourishes
or surrealism); and its bleak, brutally realistic depiction of unremitting combat end-
ing in a Pyrrhic victory after most of the film’s protagonists die. In his review for
the New York Times, Vincent Canby focused on the movie’s resolute refusal to
put the battle for Hill 937 in any larger context: “It could have been made a week
after the conclusion of the operation it recalls, which is both its strength and weak-
ness, depending on how you look at it... The film leaves it up to the audience to
decide if the war was, from the start, disastrous and futile, or if it was sabotaged
by those same bleeding- heart liberals who figure so prominently in the oeuvre of
Sylvester Stallone” (Canby, 28 August 1987). In his review Hal Hinson credited
Hamburger Hill for offering “a power ful repre sen ta tion of the fighting” from the
infantryman’s point of view, but Hinson also detected “hawkish, macho posturing”
in the scene where the soldiers discuss hostile attitudes toward them stateside and
in another scene where Frantz castigates a film crew (‘You haven’t earned the right
to be on this hill’).” In the end, Hinson expressed grudging re spect for Hamburger
Hill: “It’s a violent movie, but it doesn’t have the self- satisfied, aestheticized brutality
of Full Metal Jacket. There’s a purpose to it— a sense of values. The prob lem is that it’s
tough but not tough- minded. If it had been it might have been great. Still, there’s a
kind of greatness in it. It takes a piece out of you” (Hinson, 1987).