I hope Aaron Eckhart was paid well for the half day of work he did on one set. At least, fortunately for him, this film will be quickly forgotten. And it's sad to see Jonathan Rhys Meyers' career reduced to signing on to dreck like this.
The plot is simple enough.
Vietnam. 1966. A remote American firebase is attacked and the Viet-Cong, though driven back, somehow manage to get their hands on a binder that would compromise South Vietnamese agents. A small force is dispatched from the firebase to track and find the VC in order to retrieve or destroy the binder.
The basic outline for this plot could have made for a decent action movie in the hands of competent film makers. Unfortunately, none were available.
It is clear that the film makers did no research. I began to wonder if they could even spot Vietnam on a map.
Sometimes a film with a low budget will get the look wrong because they can't afford to build realistic looking sets or props... in this case, it seemed they simply didn't care about getting anything right
Production and costumes:
None of the characters were wearing the right uniforms or patches. You can literally order bulk surplus jungle fatigues online... this was not a budget issue... they simply got all the uniforms wrong. Every single one.
This was also glaringly obvious with the weapons. The overwhelming majority of the soldiers in this film are seen using M16A2 or A3 rifles... rifles which were not available until 20 years later. One soldier who has a beard for some reason was actually carrying an M16A4 with a rail system, a gun that wan not available until more than 30 years later.
Clearly the production had the budget for an armorer who could provide expensive rifles... just the wrong ones... all of them.
While most laymen may not notice the difference, anyone who ever served in the military in the last fifty years will and this is just indicative of the indifference or laziness of the film makers.
The location set for the firebase was laughably bad, on a par with a high school play's stage scenery. This was not a budget issue.. this was not caring or bothering. Sandbags don't cost a lot. A single later of sandbags on only one side of a machine gun position is decorative but useless. It wouldn't have taken more that a minute to google images to see how sandbags are used and maybe an extra hour to fill a whole bunch of bags.
The script:
Every cliche imaginable... and the writer clearly has no understanding of how the military works of how human beings talk to each other... and of course there are many pieces of dialog that are out of place... like one soldier complaining about eating MRE's even though it would be twenty more years before the Army switched over to eating MRES from canned C-rations. Corporals run bases and give orders to sergeants. Captains scream at everything all the time because the writer associates screaming with Army movies. And colonels lead patrols. The script is rife with every cliche imaginable "they died for nothing!" and when someone talks about how they're about to finish their tour and go home, you know he's about to die
The action is why I gave this film two stars instead of one... because I actually laughed at how bad it was. There were lots of bad CGI muzzle flash and explosion effects. The Viet Cong seem to love just standing in the open and firing instead of maybe shooting from behind a tree... and there were multiple scenes were actors were shooting each other in the back (fortunately with blanks) because the director didn't bother to tell them to not point their rifles at each other when running around firing. It's actually quite comical and I challenge viewers to count how many times they see actors shooting at each other. There was a stuntman falling from a tower too early before an explosion went off at the base of it that the director left in. As CGI mortar strike explosions in several scenes and in one scene, a stuntman throws himself flailing as if blasted by an explosion ...but they forgot to add that CGI explosion so the scene is just him flailing as he leaps sideways reacting to... nothing.
I guess the best way to sum up this movie is to look at the title... "Ambush"
There is no Ambush.
After the firebase is attacked, a captain is on the radio with a general talking about the attack and they both keep referring to it as an ambush. The attack on the base is referred to as an ambush several more times.
But an assault or raid on a base is not an ambush.
That the film makers titled their film "Ambush" and don't even know what that means really says it all.
