Go Tell the Spartans

Go Tell the Spartans
theatrical poster
Directed by	Ted Post
Produced by	Allan F. Bodoh Mitchell Cannold
Written by	Wendell Mayes Novel Daniel Ford
Starring	Burt Lancaster Craig Wasson Marc Singer
Music by	Dick Halligan
Cinematography	Harry Stradling Jr.
Editing by	Millie Moore
Distributed by	Avco Embassy Pictures
Release date(s)	June 14, 1978 (1978-06-14)
Running time	114 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.5 million

Go Tell the Spartans is a 1978 American war film based on Daniel Ford's 1967 novel Incident at Muc Wa,^[1] about U.S. Army military advisors during the early part of the Vietnam War in 1964, a time period when Ford was a correspondent in Vietnam for The Nation magazine. The screenplay, by Wendell Mayes, was shopped around for years with various older leading men attached to it in the role of Major Asa Barker. Barker is a weary infantry veteran in his third war, who provides veteran supervision to a cadre of advisors attached to a group of South Vietnamese who garrison the deserted village of Muc Wa.^[2]

Director Ted Post persuaded Avco Embassy Pictures to produce the film on a limited budget. He sent the script to a friend of Burt Lancaster, then 65 years old, who was recuperating from a knee injury – his Maj. Barker limps throughout the film.^[3] Calling the script brilliant, Lancaster agreed to star in it, and, when the 31-day production budget ran short, he paid $150,000 from his own pocket to complete it. The younger actors cast were Marc Singer as infantry Captain Mark Olivetti, a gung-ho career officer seeking to earn the Combat Infantryman Badge, and Craig Wasson as Corporal Courcey, the idealistic college-educated draftee who wants to see what a real war is like.^[4]

The film's title is from Simonides's epitaph to the three hundred soldiers who died fighting Persian invaders at Thermopylae, Greece: "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie."

Plot

It's 1964 in the period when American troops were euphemistically termed "military advisors" in Vietnam. Major Asa Barker (Burt Lancaster) has been given his current command: a poorly-manned outpost in rural Vietnam somewhere near the Da Nang to Phom Penh(Cambodia) highway that was, a decade earlier, the scene of a massacre of French soldiers during the First Indochina War - named Muc Wa.

Barker, as a seasoned officer, knows that he cannot defend his position due to his lack of both the numbers and the quality of the local troops under his command. But he is still obliged to carry out the orders of his superior, Colonel Harnitz, who sends Barker US re-enforcements to appease him. His command consists of a handful of US soldiers (encompassing the inexperienced, unhappy, idealistic and glory-seeking) and some reluctant former Vietnamese paddy farmers turned militiamen. Barker is a capable commander who, stymied his career by having an affair with a senior officer's wife, argument is that the Hamlet is deserted and has no importance. So Barker sends a detachment from his command which includes veteran sergeant Oleonowski, who is suffering from battle fatigue and commanded by the brash but nervous Lt. Hamilton. The detachment also consists of a drug addicted medic (Lincoln) and a young draftee (Courcey) who quickly befriends an elderly native volunteer (Old Man).

On their way to Muc Wa the column is ambushed, resulting in ARVN Cpl. Cowboy beheading the Vietcong attacker. On reaching the Hamlet, Hamilton sets up his defences in a triangular formation and receives supplies brought in by helicopter. At the rear of the hamlet is a graveyard, and while he is investigatating it, Courcey spots a one-eyed Vietcong solder. Back at Barker's base, he receives a Psy-ops officer who claims the he will predict which one of Barker's out posts the Cong will attack next.

During the following night Muc Wa is attacked by the Cong inflicting their first casualty (Lt. Hamilton), the next day Sgt Oleonowski commits suicide rather than face the pressure of command. When Barker is informed of the deaths, he wants to pull his troops out now that they lack an experienced leader but he is denied by Harnitz, forcing Barker to send his own deputy to Muc Wa. When the psy-ops man predicts Muc Wa will be attacked, Barker contacts them by radio only to learn that they're under a sustained attack from the Cong.

True to his predictions, the outpost is overwhelmed by the Cong, but not before Barker has relieved the surviving US soldiers. Leaving Barker, Courcey, Old Man and his fellow Vietnamese militiamen at Muc Wa and in the ensuing battle almost everyone is killed, including Barker who stays behind to cover their escape. The only American survivor is ironically the willing volunteer, Courcey, whose idealism and enthusiasm for the War has now been killed along with all his comrades, and the one-eyed Vietcong solder Courcey saw earlier.

Cast

• Burt Lancaster as Maj. Asa Barker
• Craig Wasson as Cpl. Courcey
• Jonathan Goldsmith as Sgt. Oleonowski
• Marc Singer as Capt. Olivetti
• Joe Unger as Lt. Hamilton
• Dennis Howard as Cpl. Abraham Lincoln
• David Clennon as Lt. Finley Wattsberg
• Evan C. Kim as Cpl. "Cowboy"
• John Megna as Cpl. Ackley
• Hilly Hicks as Signalman Toffee
• Dolph Sweet as Gen. Harnitz
• Clyde Kusatsu as Col. "Lard Ass" Minh
• James Hong as Pvt. "Old Man"
• Denice Kumagai as "Butterfly"
• Tad Horino as "One-eyed Charlie" (Vietcong scout)
• Phong Diep as Minh's Interpreter
• Ralph Brannen as Col. Minh's ADC
• Mark Carlton as Capt. Schlitz

Release and reception

Go Tell the Spartans was released in the United States on June 14, 1978. It was re-released on September 7, 1987, and came out on video in the United States on May 13, 1992.^[5]

Though the film had a limited release in the United States, critics, especially those opposed to the Vietnam War, praised it: "In sure, swift strokes," wrote Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in the Saturday Review, "it shows the irrelevance of the American presence in Vietnam, the corruption wrought by that irrelevance, and the fortuity, cruelty, and waste of an irrelevant war." Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic found it "the best film I've seen about the Vietnam War." More broadly, Roger Grooms in the Cincinnati Enquirer judged it to be "one of the noblest films, ever, about men in crisis."

Over time, the film became an overlooked anti-war classic. At one of its revivals, it was described as:

A cult fave — and deservedly so — Go Tell the Spartans was hard-headed and brutally realistic about our dead-end presence in Vietnam; released the same year as Coming Home and The Deer Hunter, the film won critical admiration, but audiences preferred individualised sagas, sentiment, and romantic melodrama. Rather than tackle the effects of the war on physically and emotionally wounded vets, this brave film exposed the fundamental, tactical lunacy of the war as perceived by an American officer (Burt Lancaster) who knows better, but must follow through on stupid, self-destructive orders from above. This is one of Lancaster's best performances: embittered, a cog in the military juggernaut, this good man foresees the killing waste to come.^[6]

In 1979, Wendell Mayes' screenplay was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for "Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium (Screen)".^[7]

Notes

External links

• Go Tell the Spartans at the Internet Movie Database
• Go Tell the Spartans at the TCM Movie Database
• Go Tell the Spartans at Allmovie