Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan

(MA15+) ★★★

Director: Kriv Stenders.

Cast: Travis Fimmel, Daniel Webber, Luke Bracey, Richard Roxburgh, Nicholas Hamilton, Matt Doran, Stephen Peacocke, Myles Pollard, Uli Latukefu, Anthony Hayes, Sam Parsonson.

"No, I said half Hawaiian, half Mexican, with extra cheese."

"War? Huh! Good lord! What is it good for?" asked The Temptations (and Edwin Starr and Bruce Springsteen and Frankie Goes To Hollywood).

The answer to this question is "movies". Or, more particularly in this case, "Aussie movies".

We Aussies do love churning out war films, almost as much as we love commemorating Anzac Day. In the past decade alone we've seen Beneath Hill 60, The Railway Man, The Water Diviner and Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge (and you could probably include Tomorrow When The War Began in that lot if you wanted).

The latest addition to the list is the awkwardly titled Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan, which tries (and succeeds) at putting you in the midst of that fateful day in 1966.

For those who slept through history class (or didn't get taught about it), the Battle Of Long Tan is one of Australia's best "against great odds" war stories - 100 Aussies and some long range Howitzers versus an estimated North Vietnamese/Viet Cong force of about 2000 troops in a South Vietnamese rubber plantation.

Stenders' film puts you among the soldiers in visceral and well filmed fashion. It looks stunning and when shit gets real early on, it's heart-pounding stuff. There is also an admirable level of authenticity to proceedings. The battle seems to play out in real time, and the lingo, uniforms and behaviours make it feel like the real deal.

The downside of this is that the film becomes a near-endless barrage of shoot-outs that unfortunately begin to look and feel exactly the same. The shots become identical from one mini-battle to the next - count how many times you see a slo-mo of a faceless North Vietnamese soldier blown into the air by a Howitzer blast.

This action focus is at the expense of character. We get to meet five of the soldiers, led by Fimmel's Harry Smith, very briefly in the opening, but after that you're left to guess out who is who, with no names or character arcs for context. It makes it hard to feel for those that don't make it, which sucks a lot of the emotional punch out of the film.

Having said that, the performances are pretty solid all round. Fimmel is given the most to do and is a nice mix of suitably damaged, overly gung-ho, and quietly human in the face of great adversity. The rest of the nameless grunts are left to be scared/brave/determined/exhausted and do a good job of it, with Bracey standing out. Roxburgh, as the hissable "villain" Brigadier Jackson, is the only one outside of Fimmel given a lot of dramatic work to do.

There is some pretty impressive stuntwork, the cinematography from Ben Nott is superb, and the production design is good. One strange thing that bears mentioning is how bad the monsoon in the film looks - it's painfully obvious that it wasn't really raining, and that a too-small number of overhead sprinklers and minimal CGI were used to ill effect.

Stenders has put together a well shot and engaging re-enactment of the Battle of Long Tan, which strives for authenticity and should at least be praised for its efforts in achieving this and honouring the fallen. As a film though, it falls short in many areas, becoming a repetitive, emotionless and vaguely propagandist endeavour due to there being no context around the battle or the brave men who sadly gave their lives.