The Dean of Cinema

The wrong man. In the wrong place. At the right time. A disk jockey goes to Vietnam to work for the Armed Forces Radio Service. While he becomes popular among the troops, his superiors disapprove of his humor.

I don’t normally hype up celebrities or put them on a pedestal but Robin Williams was different. He was a huge source of entertainment for me from Genie in Aladdin to his wildly hilarious stand up comedy. His album Live on Broadway in 2002 was an album I could quote from front to back from memory. In a time where our nation was still reeling from the attacks on 9/11, Robin Williams went out on stage and showed the country it was okay to laugh again.

For graduating from film school, my dad took me to see Robin Williams perform live at the University of Central Florida during his “Weapons of Self Destruction” tour. My dad wasn’t normally one to give up a laugh, but he was falling over in his seat laughing at Williams. Williams took no prisoners on stage and that show was no different. He literally spent the entire first 15 minutes of his time roasting the college administration to their faces over a scandal involving Michael Jordan’s son. It was bliss. His death truly hurt and it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to bring myself to watch him on screen again. I would find myself putting on a movie starring him and be unable to enjoy the performances knowing what we know now. I’m finally getting back around to enjoying his wonderful gift for comedy and first up on the docket was this film from 1987.

Good Morning Vietnam is a highlight in the illustrious filmography of Robin Williams. Director Barry Levinson put him in front of a camera with a microphone and let him rip. What follows isn’t only one of the more hilarious performances ever captured on film, but also an emotional and poignant one as Adrian Cronauer. Williams was always gifted at deftly swinging from one extreme to the other. One of my favorite scenes in the film is after Cronauer is taken off air for reading “unofficial news” during his broadcast. Garlick is trying to convince him to go back on air. They stumble upon a caravan of troops stuck in traffic. Against Cronauer’s wishes, Garlick introduces him to the troops. Cronauer immediately starts hamming it up for the guys, but there is so much more going on here. Cronauer knows these men, these boys, are being sent to war and gives them a performance to take their minds off it for only a few moments. The emotion behind the performance by Williams is astounding. His ability to show that emotion while behind tremendously funny is something only a great like Williams could pull off. Similarly near the end of the film when he discovers his friend Tuan’s real identity, the pain and betrayal he shows is genuine. He trusted someone and he didn’t even know who they really were. That’s something we can all relate to, if only on a much smaller scale than the war in Vietnam.

Forest Whitaker’s Private Edward Garlick is a fun character to watch evolve through his time with Cronauer. He becomes more comfortable in his skin and being who he is in the face of the conformity of the Army. Whitaker has always been one of acting’s greats and going back to see some of his earlier performances is a treat. Bruno Kirby absolutely nails his role as Lt. Hauk, a man who thinks he is funny, but has the personality of watching paint dry. His insistence that he’s funny despite the evidence to the contrary is fun albeit a bit cringe to watch. Kirby was such a gifted actor able to go from playing young Clemenza opposite Robert DeNiro’s Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II to someone like Hauk without batting an eye. He’s an insufferable character that you enjoy watching lose. The real enemy to Cronauer is Sergeant Major Dickerson, a real prick of a soldier who embodies the same black and white thinking that got the US involved in a hopeless war to begin with. A man completely out of touch with what the men on the front line need and how they think. Walsh is an excellent actor and especially excels in this type of role. Tung Thanh Tran plays Tuan, a student in Cronauer’s English class. They befriend one another, but Tuan isn’t who he says he is. Tran holds his own in scenes with Williams and gives his all in their final scene together. You get a glimpse of what life was like from someone else’s perspective. It was a powerful scene.

The film isn’t without its problems. Cronauer’s insistence in pursuing Tuan’s sister Trinh has not aged well. She says no, but he persists. To be clear, Chintara Sukapatana’s performance is great. Like Tran, she holds her own in her scenes with Williams. It only helps highlight how different they are, and the issues with his pursuit. I’m not sure if this was seen as “romantic” back then or not, but it comes off creepy.

Barry Levinson, who previously directed Diner, and The Natural directs Good Morning Vietnam from a script by Mitch Markowitz, who was familiar with war comedies having written a couple episodes of the hit show M*A*S*H. While most of Williams’s performance as Cronauer was improvised, the script for Good Morning Vietnam is still a tightly constructed story with characters that seem all too real at times. It doesn’t look like most Vietnam films, but then again, it isn’t most Vietnam films. Peter Sova’s cinematography still features beautiful imagery of the Vietnam countryside and city life, while simultaneously not shying away from the violence and bloodshed the region was known for. Multiple sequences feel like they could have been ripped from newsreels from the war.

The film features a great soundtrack with artists like The Beach Boys, James Brown, Martha and the Vandellas, and more. A lot of the tracks are songs I love to listen to while I cook thanks to my family and films like Good Morning Vietnam. These types of songs weren’t what was going out on air at the time so Cronauer’s show was a respite from the same old “pre-approved” music from top brass.

Overall, Good Morning Vietnam is uproariously funny, and poignant look at life in Vietnam during one of the worst conflicts in history. It takes you away from the front lines and puts you in the world of the people whose job it was to keep morale up and news flowing to the brave soldiers fighting to survive hundreds of thousands of miles from home. If you can bring yourself to watch Williams, you won’t be disappointed.

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