Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Eduardo Kiehl (mortarsquad) kind of, assuming this movie is way way better and 10 years younger. I made this trailer with some of the lines of the movie and best scenes also. Impressive performance by unknown actors in this low-budget Vietnam drama. This movie actually is a great masterpiece.The story is being told in the form of a documentary, bringing you to the deep jungle of the Vietnam conflict.The immersion is so effective that is the closest experience you can get of a real patrol inside Nam-war era. The minors details of the guerrilla highlight by Patrick Duncan, the director, make he movie even more realistic.TRAILER 720p(upscaled) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrc3U4X2aZ0

MisterWhiplash Watching 84 Charlie MoPic right after watching Rambo: First Blood Part II is like watching a difference between a Republican and a Democrat. You get to see all of the mindless, brawny stuff, the nonsense and the mayhem, and in the end everything is supposed to turn out alright when it really shouldn't. Then you get to see some sensibility, compassion, understanding, and there's still a tough quality when it's there and not hidden behind the speeches. It's a fascinating experiment to do if you're into movies in general, or have seen neither one particularly. Ultimately, MoPic won the double feature in terms of quality and durability, albeit with a smaller budget and sometimes a little *too* much on its mind. Neither film reinvents the wheel (and naturally Rambo blew maybe too many up to count), but with Patrick Duncan's film he gets to the heart and soul of what is best about these guys in combat: soldiers just making their way, some harder asses than others, who all just want to find a way home. Sadly, Rambo's home *is* the jungle, but that's for another review.One can tell the film is low-budget, if nothing else, because of the lack of action. It's possible that the director might have been tempted to up the ante if he had more to work with, or bigger-name stars. But as with other under-the-radar "B movies" about war, less can be more depending on the script and the actors given. No one is really too recognizable here (some actors went on to do TV, others didn't, they were all fresh faces to me), and that adds to the believability. No one is an action hero, and some are just scared so much you can feel it through clenched teeth. There's jokes told here and there, some big words, and steely glances. No one in this company going through Charlie's territory likes it one iota, not even LT, who is looking perhaps to rise in the ranks of what he sees as a "corporation" like Gulf & Western. Another soldier rightfully quips, 'or Engulf and Devour.'The approach that writer/director/former-vet Duncan does is not the first of its kind in terms of style (he was preceded by at least a few years by Cannibal Holocaust's method of first-person cinematography and point of view), but it's the first film I can think of that uses not only the approach but the person holding the camera as part of the story. MioPic is a guy who has been editing footage for a while at a nearby base, and gets cans and cans of films to look at; some have nothing, other ones, well, they keep him up at night. That this isn't just a passive observer adds to the tension when it comes time to shoot the combat footage (however little it is, though it makes sense after a while), since he's got to have the balls to keep up and not look away. It covers the problem that certain horror films have when one wonders why the camera wouldn't just turn off after a while. We are, as they are, stuck in a fixed position. Oddly enough it kind of is the predecessor of the real-life approach to filming most of the documentary Restrepo. Again, for another review on that one.While one could nitpick certain things with the style- such as, there being perfect sound but it being a camera circa 1968 or 1969, which means a sound guy or at least a boom operator would need to be around, and who isn't- but it's really about the men on screen, men that Duncan himself may have known to an extent. It should be noted that not all of the characters are originals either. There's the cocky guy, the quiet focused man (no interviews), the country white-trash guy (actually, he's not as conventional as you'd expect), and a few other types. The approach in how long we stick with the guys, just them talking, before a shot is even fired, does do something crucial: we are with them for so long that they become real and we can feel the pain when one is hurt, or , eventually, as they're picked off. Some of this is so powerful that one can overlook certain similarities to other war films (i.e. the 'sniper-shooting-soldier' scene in Full Metal Jacket, a heated exchange of one soldier to another from Platoon).It's a character piece that gets us feeling for what these soldiers had to go through, how insane it was just to get from point A to B to C, how its 'corporation' of sorts was neither a real business or a game, perhaps something in between. It's far from perfect, but it's alive and kicking as a testament to people in war. It never trivializes, or makes it very "fun", but it's hard to look away. Unlike Rambo (which I did not hate by the way), it's as true as it can be.

zardoz-13 Long before "Cloverfield" earned praise for the immediacy of its approach to a "Godzilla" horror story by shooting from the perspective of a handy cam in the fist of a survivor, writer & director Patrick Sheane Duncan's "84C MoPic" pioneered this novel technique. This 95-minute, low-budget Vietnam War movie with its largely unknown cast boasts the distinction of being helmed by a 'Nam veteran. Deane emphasizes authenticity by lensing everything from the view point of a combat photographer. Indeed, the camera serves as the film's point of view, and Patrick maintains this point of view from fade-in to fade-out.Unquestionably, the conceit of "84C MoPic" is nothing short of brilliant. A combat photographer (Byron Thames of "Johnny Dangerously") films a reconnaissance unit choppered into the bush as a training film for the military. Deane's distinctive film then has not only an immediacy about it but it also contains a clever rational for its artless artistry. The closest thing in real life to "84C MoPic" is John Houston's World War II documentary "The Battle of San Pietro." Everything is seen from the camera and the camera is constantly in the rear because no cameraman would expose himself to enemy fire by standing in front of his own troops. The hand-held, cine'ma ve'rite' style of film-making fuels the realism of "84C Charlie MoPic." The soldiers do nothing in this movie that isn't thoroughly believable. The procedure of bagging and tagging a body hammers home hard the lack of glamor. "84C MoPic" manifests few pretensions and the character never argue about the validity of the Vietnam.If genuinely artistic photography were the only necessity for a great movie, then Deane's film would have amounted to a classic. Unfortunately, despite the excellence of Deane's first-person, in-your-face technique, "84C MoPic" provides only intermittently entertainment as an action-packed war story. Deane populates his screenplay with relatively bland, one-dimensional characters that rarely engage our sympathy. They lack charisma. Since we never become emotionally attached to any of them, the ones that die generate little concern for us. The G.I. humor is old and stale. Ultimately, despite some tense moments of combat near the end, "84C MoPic" is not memorable in the least. None of the characters stand out and the enemy is rarely seen. Deane occasionally undermines his powerful atmosphere of realism by having his camera running during a dangerous moment. Would anybody seriously risk their life by photographing an unsuspecting enemy who might hear the sounds of film whirling through their camera? Primarily, Deane's screenplay is an anthology of war story clichés. "84C MoPic" replicates the World War II movie cliché that the unit contained an ethnic collection of oddballs. Alas, these guys are bland, and the story is for the most part boring. There is the guy with less than a month to go before he is shipped home but is paranoid about his chances of survival. There is the green, inexperienced lieutenant, LT (Jonathan Emerson of "Graveyard Shift"),who couldn't find his own dog tags with his hands in broad daylight but volunteered for combat to earn a promotion. There is the angry black man simply named OD(Richard Brooks of NBC-TV's "Law & Order") who threatens to kill his superior officer. There is a backwoods North Carolina redneck,Cracker (Glenn Morshower of "Black Hawk Down"), who turns a blind eye to the black man and considers him a true brother, something that he admits would never happen back home. Each character addresses the other by their nicknames: 'Pretty Boy,''L-T,' 'Cracker,' and 'OD.' The performances are ordinary enough.Nobody hams it up, but they don't make much of an impression. There is nothing incredibly gory. The closest to real violence is the scene where an enemy sniper targets Pretty Boy. The sniper keeps on shooting the soldier and nobody can come to rescue. At one point, the soldier even tries to blow himself up with a hand grenade. Although the story is neither original nor dramatic enough, "84C MoPic" deserves three silver stars for its technique and its interpretation. The irony of the ending is a neat touch. Mind you, this movie isn't as memorable as "Apocalypse Now," "The Deer Hunter," or "Platoon," but it is worth watching.Altogether, "84C MoPic" still qualifies as a unique film that is too realistic for its own good. Surprisingly, given the potential of the premise, nobody has remade it with a big budget for special effects.

carol-160 This low-budget movie packs a maximum impact. The cast of no-names eliminates the predisposition to the glorification of war associated with many big name "war" actors. I have rarely seen a film about small-unit dynamics as well done. Every part is well-acted. Of interest are the relationships between the draftees, the enlisted lifer, and the opportunistic Lieutenant. The tension, confusion, and boredom of combat operations is captured in excruciating yet tender detail. The film conveys a good sense of the terrible waste of the Vietnam war. This movie is down, dirty, and real. If you are a war film buff, this one is a must see!