Watch The Boys in Company C For Free

The Worst Film Ever

Best movie of this year hands down!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

In 1978 there were five American movies released dealing with the Vietnam War:The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino) - Coming Home (Hal Ashby) - Who'll Stop the Rain / Dog Soldiers (Karel Reisz) - Go Tell the Spartans (Ted Post) - The Boys of Company C (Sidney Furie)The first two were big box office hits and were awarded with a slew of Oscars. The next three are less known and in the case of The Boys in Company C difficult to find. These movies were released five years after president Nixon ordered the evacuation of American troops from Vietnam. It's interesting to see how Hollywood has rewritten the US involvement in Vietnam at least three times. The first Vietnam movie was The Green Berets (1968) in which John Wayne presented the Vietnam conflict as a noble cause betrayed by the media and the protesters back in the US. Then in the aftermath of the war there was the shameful outrage with Tracks (1976) and Dog Soldiers (1978). The third trend was the tragic mistake/loss of innocence thesis with The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979). In the eighties it became full circle with the Rambo sequels and their imitations and returned to the doubtful The Green Berets judgment. The second half of the eighties became a combination of all these trends.So 1978 was the turning point between the first two trends. The Boys in Company C was released almost 10 years before Full Metal Jacket (1987). Not only do both films have the same structure, but The Boys in Company C also has the first acting role of the most memorable character of Full Metal Jacket: R. Lee Ermey as Sergeant Hartman. R. Lee Ermey was a real Marine Corps Drill Instructor before he became an actor/technical adviser. But the acting in both films are great from a then largely unknown cast.What sets The Boys in Company C apart from other Vietnam movies is that the climax is a not big battle scene but a soccer game. This soccer game could mean life or death for the American soldiers if they throw the game. The message at the end may be a bit naive, but that doesn't make it less true.

Guess the lack of pretentiousness of "The Boys in Company C" just didn't fit in with the "Vietnam" films of it's time like "Deer Hunter" and "Coming Home". The film, director Sidney J. Furie, and actor Stan Shaw all deserve a lot more recognition then they were given at that time or since.Tyrone Washington (Stan Shaw) is a unique movie character for the time. He's the most sensible and able Marine in the company, a bad-ass who learns to lead instead of just taking care of himself, who is also a Black man from the Chicago streets who, initially, aspires to shipping drugs home from Vietnam. Shaw's portrayal of Washington is apt and the changes the character goes thru made very credible.The main heavy duty allegory here is that the Marines need to lose the soccer game in order to ensure their own survival. Of course this is contrary to their ethos, training, and esprit de corps.This is a somewhat tough to find film these days, and anyone that finds a copy if fortunate indeed!

This is one of the most realistic Vietnam movies I've seen over the years having grown up after World War II and during the Korean war. i loved war movies and tried to watch them all on the big screen. I'm a four cruise Vietnam Navy Veteran myself now retired and I still love war movies and the old ones that aren't on DVD needs to be so my collection can grow even bigger with these greats Apocalypse Now, The Green Beret, Full Metal Jacket, Coming Home, Dead Presidents and Patoon to name a few. When those guys get to Boot Camp and the Marines jump out the building yelling at them when they get off the bus is classic. Movies like these should be great recruitment tools to get the men and women to join whatever brand they like to join just like I did when I joined the Navy before Nam!!!!

Even though the low budget of this film shows through at times, it still manages to be a compelling and intense portrayal of the whole experience of being sent to Vietnam, right from boot camp up to fighting. It really feels like one is there is at times, and it is fascinating to watch the changes that characters undergo in the course of the film. The symbolic soccer themes and ideas do not always work, but they still retain some power. The camera-work and editing suits the project fine, and the film also has an excellent, haunting song, "Here I Am", to go with the material. It is quite similar in many ways to 'Full Metal Jacket', and even though the technical side and acting might be inferior here, this is still one hell of a fine movie depicting the experiences of being involved in war from a recruit's point of view.