Actually, I feel like I’m hearing a complete new commentary EACH time I listen to it. Does it mean my English is improving?
Here are other bits I could hear this time:
- Front was no place for cerebral thinking — it was all about radar, about instincts. You needed to be a natural born warrior — some guys did the best they could … but some were dead in the moment they put on the uniforms
- we’ve lost a Philipino crew member while building the tunnels
- Richard Edson was a member of the band Lounge Lizards
- Barnes is loved by his men because he cares for them. Military affection… and it’s clear he is emotionally involved with them.
- Elias had an element of individuality that worked against the machine
- Barnes is a street fighter
- I felt that about Barnes: That he had dead eyes, he’d been the death, he’d been back, across the gulf. That’s what gave him this power over men.
Actually Stone says about Barnes prototype: “he was shot…” – makes a pause to let O’Neil say his joke, and ends: “…was shot in the face… and had miraculous recovery, blah blah blah.” So maybe the “real” Barnes survived.
Stone was wounded the 2. time on Jan 15th 1968 (the church ambush scene)
Stone also names Firebase Burt, attacked on 1st Jan 68. The battle was never mentioned in any source about Vietnam War, so until Hemphill’s book came out, Stone started to think it had never happened and that he’d imagined that night.
The battles in the movie are actually reversed in time.
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