Set during the early part of the Vietnam War, in 1964, Go, Tell the Spartans centers om he work of U.S. Army military advisors, based on Daniel Ford’s 1967 novel Incident at Muc Wa, when Ford was war correspondent for The Nation.
Grade: B
| Go Tell the Spartans | |
|---|---|
Theatrical poster
|
|
Lancaster plays infantry Major Asa Barker, a seasoned but weary vet of World War II and Korean War, now in command of a poorly manned US Army advisor outpost that’s overlooking three villages in South Vietnam.
He is ordered to reoccupy a nearby deserted hamlet named Muc Wa on the Da Nang-to-Phnom Penh highway, which had been the scene of massacre of French soldiers during the First Indochina War.
After encountering a booby-trapped roadblock on the way to Muc Wa, the group capture a lone Viet Cong soldier who is beheaded by Cowboy when the man refuses to divulge information.
In due course, CPl Courcey (Craig Wasson) discovers the graveyard where 302 French soldiers were buried after being massacred by the Viet Minh. He translates a French inscription as “Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by. That here, obedient to their laws, we lie,” which references the Battle of Thermopylae.
In the end, Courcey becomes the only survivor, after realizing that Barker and the South Vietnamese militia soldiers have been stripped of uniforms and weapons. Dazed, he staggers into the French graveyard where he again encounters the one-eyed VC scout. However, the badly wounded VC raises his rifle before dropping it out of exhaustion, and Courcey wanders alone onto the dirt road.
The story was inspired by a futile 1964 special-forces operation at Tan Hoa in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, a senseless objective of an isolated settlement containing only one field, abandoned airstrip, and some French gravestones.
The graves inspired the film’s title, from Simonides’s epitaph to the 300 soldiers killed in the Battle of Thermopylae against the Persians in 480 B.C.: “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.” Like the Spartans at Thermopylae, the film’ soldiers, are sent to their deaths.
Cast
Craig Wasson as Cpl. Courcey
Jonathan Goldsmith as CSM Oleonowski
Marc Singer as Capt. Olivetti
Joe Unger as Lt. Hamilton
Dennis Howard as Cpl. Abraham Lincoln
David Clennon as Lt. Finley Wattsberg
Evan C. Kim as Cpl. “Cowboy”
John Megna as Cpl. Ackley
Hilly Hicks as Signalman Toffee
Dolph Sweet as Gen. Harnitz
Credits:
Directed by Ted Post
Written by Wendell Mayes, based on Incident at Muc Wa by Daniel Ford
Produced by Allan F. Bodoh, Mitchell Cannold
Cinematography Harry Stradling Jr.
Edited by Millie Moore
Music by Dick Halligan
Production: MarVista Entertainment
Spartan Productions
Distributed by AVCO Embassy Pictures (US)p; UA (International)
Release date: June 14, 1978
Running time: 114 minutes
Budget $1.5 million
