The Siege of Firebase Gloria (1989)

Powerful

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

When I started to watch this movie, I hadn't heard anything about it and didn't expect very much. I was therewith pleasantly surprised. Make no mistake, this is no masterpiece, but a well done entertaining piece of work which (even) makes you think a little at times.I found the acting to be uniformly quite decent, even though the VietCong are mostly closer to being cartoon characters than real people. What carries the movie though, is the performance by Ermey, R. Lee. Once again he shows there is nobody better than him for roles like these. He is simply excellent! The camera and sound are both satisfactory, and the special f/x as well, considering we are talking about a motion picture made in the eighties (no CGI, etc.). All in all, after almost 30 years, this film withstands the test of time and is definitely worth a look.

I was actually shocked that such a great film had gone under my radar for so long. What gives? Most likely, it was just criminally under- distributed and marketed, causing it to almost fade into utter oblivion had it not been for the internet and plenty of fan word-of-mouth spreading news of this one around the war movie boards.This Australian / Filipino war movie set during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam stands as a bit of an anomaly. They were working with a quite low budget and cast mostly unknowns and locals aside from the two leads Hauser and Ermey, but the budget cuts in no way affect the quality and quantity of sheer action to be viewed.As a total bonus to the action, we're treated to an honest-to-god great script as well, with plenty of very memorable quotes and one-liners. I haven't seen a Vietnam War movie that was this delightfully cruel, mean- spirited, and possibly even darkly satirical since PLATOON, which may be a little artier and have a better cast, but otherwise is matched by this hard-hitting war outing.More on the action - there's at least 3 major battle scenes and as many minor ones spread all throughout the film. It definitely doesn't leave the war junky viewer feeling cheated in the slightest bit. There's plenty of explosions, decapitations, evisceration, waves of humans being mowed down by 50 caliber machine guns, ZULU style, and Huey's firing rockets into palm trees galore! Excitement and tension holds throughout with dramatic panache at every turn. Even the sound design is top- notch, quite realistic, and services the action nicely.My only complaints are with a few iffy performances and dated death scenes later in the film along with places where the musical score sounds a little like it came out of a Nintendo game, but comparing this to any of the other Filipino war movies made during the same period, it's GONE WITH THE WIND.Fans of Filipino C-movies will have a field day spotting the likes of Don Wilson, Nick Nicholson, and Kristine Erlandson in possibly their classiest supporting roles which really stretched their acting chops as never before. Unfortunately for them, very few people saw this film and it didn't lead to bigger and better things for most aside from director Trenchard-Smith (who broke into Hollywood soon after) and editor Andrew Prowse (who rightfully became a B-action filmmaker not too long afterward).

This film is quite a nice surprise for fans of war movies. R. Lee Ermey gives a truly sympathetic and tough-as-nails performance. The action scenes are top-notch (and who would expect anything less from Ozploitation director Brian Trenchard-Smith?) It is hard not to love this little flick. The DVD from Amazon is manufactured on demand - ripped from a VHS. The quality is a lot better than one would expect from such a source, but it still does not do justice to this forgotten gem. This would be an ideal title for Synapse Films or Severin Films to do a blu-ray special edition for!Highly Recommended

The action centers around the Tet offensive of 1968."The Siege of Firebase Gloria" explores the relationship between Sergeant Major Hafner (R. Lee Ermey)and his protégé Cpl. Di Nardo(Wings Hauser),two members of a Marine Recon squad.The movie opens with a visit to An Lap village,where all inhabitants have been killed and beheaded by the Vietcong.After some fighting the Recon team is transported by helicopter to "Firebase Gloria",which is completely unprepared for the siege of Vietcong that will follow."The Siege of Firebase Gloria" is a fairly realistic war movie with lots of shooting and some harrowing scenes of bloodshed.The acting is great,the characters are heroic and well-developed and the action almost never lets up.8 bullets out of 10.