Stone Takes Willis and Tatum to Vietnam

Oliver can't get enough of the war we would like to forget about

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Tuesday, August 28th 2007 at 8:03 PM

Sometimes I wonder if filmmakers wish there were actually more wars we could make movies about, or if the Vietnam war was so fucked up that we should just continue to revisit it. Oliver Stone apparently likes it so much that he is now set to make his fourth film surrounding the war we all wish never happened.

Word is that Stone is closing a deal with United Artists to finance Pinkville with Bruce Willis and Channing Tatum set to star.

Mikko Alanne wrote the script, which centers on the investigation of the 1968 My Lai massacre. Willis will play Army Gen. William R. Peers, who supervised the investigation into the massacre by U.S. soldiers of as many as 500 My Lai villagers, most of them unarmed women, children and elderly.

Tatum will play Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot who, upon realizing what was happening below, put a stop to the killing by placing his craft between gunmen and the few villagers who were left, and telling his two shipmates to fire on the soldiers if they shot any more people. They airlifted the survivors and reported the carnage to superiors.

Pinkville is the description on a military map for the region where My Lai is.

I'm not saying this film won't be good, I am just starting to think it may be tired ground to walk on again. Of course, considering Stone did a tour of duty in Vietnam I can fully understand why it might be something he feels worth revisiting, he certainly proved he could capture awards as he collected Oscars for Best Director for both Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, each film was nominated for three Oscars.