This is one of the best movies abut Viet Nam ever and the best about the early (fist five years) part of the war. If you thing Rambo and Delta force are what Viet Nam was about, don't watch. If you want a feel for what was going on then, watch.

In a recent biography of Burt Lancaster, Go Tell The Spartans is described as the best Vietnam war film that nobody ever saw. Hopefully with television and video products that will be corrected.

I prefer to think of it as a prequel to Platoon. This film is set in 1964 when America's participation was limited to advisers by this time raised to about 20,000 of them by President Kennedy. Whether if Kennedy had lived and won a second term he would have increased our commitment to a half a million men as Lyndon Johnson did is open to much historical speculation.

Major Burt Lancaster heads such an advisory team with his number two Captain Marc Singer. They get some replacements and a new assignment to build a fortress where the French tried years ago and failed.

The replacements are a really mixed bag, a sergeant who Lancaster has served with before and respects highly in Jonathan Goldsmith, a very green and eager second lieutenant in Joe Unger, a demolitions man who is a draftee and at that time Vietnam service was a strictly volunteer thing in Craig Wasson, and a medic who is also a junkie in Dennis Howard. For one reason or another all of these get sent forward to build that outpost in a place that suddenly has acquired military significance.

I said before this could be a prequel to Platoon. Platoon is set in the time a few years later when the USA was fully militarily committed in Vietnam. Platoon raises the same issues about the futility of that war, but I think Go Tell The Spartans does a much better job. Hard to bring your best effort into the fight since who and what you're fighting and fighting for seems to change weekly.

Originally this project was for William Holden and I'm surprised Holden passed on it. Maybe for the better because Lancaster strikes just the right note as the professional soldier in what was a backwater assignment who politics has passed over for promotion. Knowing all that you will understand why Lancaster makes the final decision he does.

Two others of note are Evan Kim who is the head of the South Vietnamese regulars and interpreter who Lancaster and company are training. He epitomizes the brutality of the struggle for us in a way that we can't appreciate from the other side because we never meet any of the Viet Cong by name. Dolph Sweet plays the general in charge of the American Vietnam commitment, a General Harnitz. He is closest to a real character because the general in charge their before Johnson raised the troop levels and put in William Westmoreland was Paul Harkins.

Joe Unger is who I think gives the best performance as the shavetail lieutenant with all the conventional ideas of war and believes we have got to be with the good guys since we are Americans. He learns fast that you issue uniforms for a reason and wars against people who don't have them are the most difficult.

I think one could get a deep understanding of just what America faced in 1964 in Vietnam by watching Go Tell The Spartans.

The most famous anti-Vietnam War movies from 1978 are "The Deer Hunter", "Coming Home" and "Who'll Stop the Rain". Another one was Ted Post's "Go Tell the Spartans". This one takes place in Vietnam right before US troops got fully involved. It makes clear that the US made a bad choice by taking over the French effort. And as always, those at the top were always gung ho no matter how bad things got. To this day, the ultra-hawks insist that we could have "won" the Vietnam War (what would that even mean?). As Michael Moore later noted, the US army hasn't had a military victory in over seventy years.

It made sense to cast Burt Lancaster in the movie, as he had come out against the war (as did Jane Fonda, star of "Coming Home"). We thought that it would permanently end war. Too bad that the war machine was still there. Indeed, at the time of the movie's release, the US was arming South Africa in the latter's version of the Vietnam War in Angola (although that one led to the eventual collapse of apartheid).

The rest of the cast includes Jonathan Goldsmith (known as the most interesting man in the world) and Clyde Kusatsu (of "American Pie").