Absolutely Nothing Could Salvage John Wayne’s Biggest, Most Controversial Failure

In the midst of the politics of the Vietnam War splitting America, John Wayne doubled down on the controversy that accompanied his decades-long career. In 1968, he made The Green Berets, his love letter to the U.S. military on the war that had the full backing of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. Wayne set out to rally public support for the increasingly unpopular conflict, roping in the Pentagon, who provided helicopters, weapons, real Green Berets, and access to the army base at Fort Benning, Georgia, for filming. Alongside director Ray Kellogg, Wayne co-directed The Green Berets and starred in it. Feeling more like a government commercial, the movie is a cultural relic that critics and historians alike have continued to dissect for its simplistic politics and cinematic shortcomings despite all the firepower and star power that Wayne brought to it.

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John Wayne has had his share of contributions to war movies, from some of the best ever made, like the World War II D-Day landings in The Longest Day, alongside Henry Fonda and a host of other stars, to his Oscar-nominated performance in Sands of Iwo Jima to his frontier skirmishes in Western war films. In The Green Berets, he sought to “set the record straight” by adapting Robin Moore’s novel of the same name, which had initially elicited debate over its gritty portrayal of Special Forces. Wayne persuaded the White House, through personal letters to LBJ, that his film would boost troop morale and support the Vietnam War effort. With Washington’s approval, the Pentagon granted Wayne equipment, advisors, and access to a military base, where entire villages were built for filming. The strings attached to this support were that the film’s scripts would be vetted to ensure a squeaky-clean image. The result is a film that scrubs the U.S. Army’s presence in Vietnam clean of controversy. There are no civilian casualties, no questioning of America’s presence. When a skeptical journalist raises doubts, he’s swiftly silenced. Meanwhile, Vietnamese characters are reduced to helpless victims or cartoonish villains with barely a word to say.

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John Wayne plays Colonel Mike Kirby, who leads a squad of U.S. Special Forces into Vietnam to train South Vietnamese troops. In a clear bid to “win hearts and minds,” the film hides American missteps and highlights their humanity while painting the enemy in a far darker light. For instance, Wayne’s unit adopts a South Vietnamese orphan named Hamchunk (Craig Jue) and his dog. The scene serves to justify American intervention as a noble rescue mission for helpless victims. Conversely, throughout its runtime, The Green Berets depicts the Viet Cong forces as inhuman, showing them as faceless hordes who torture prisoners and murder civilians, akin to some of John Wayne’s older Westerns where Native Americans were cast as nameless enemies in a clear-cut “cowboys vs. savages” dynamic. However, this simplistic take on the Vietnam War did not impress critics.

John Wayne’s Film Was a Critical Bloodbath That Was Ironically a Box Office Success

Renata Adler of The New York Times described The Green Berets as “so unspeakable, so stupid, so rotten and false in every detail.” Roger Ebert called it a “virus,” saying it “simply will not do as a film about the war in Vietnam.” Even when you set politics aside, the film stumbles elsewhere. Key Vietnamese roles, including Colonel Cai, are played by non-Vietnamese actors like Jack Soo, George Takei, and Irene Tsu, with little effort to capture cultural authenticity. The script glosses over the war’s political complexity, painting the Viet Cong as evil with no motivation or ideology.

In the end, John Wayne’s The Green Berets failed in its mission to be remembered for what it said, instead earning a notorious legacy for what it refused to say. While it thrived at the box office, thanks in part to the buzz around its controversy, The Green Berets showed that no amount of support can fix a film out of sync with its moment or its message.