Gardens of Stone

Unjustly underrated upon its release, GARDENS OF STONE is a quiet, respectful film filled with emotional power, exceptional acting (especially by Caan), and technical virtuosity.

The film is far from being a seamless work of art, but it probably comes closer to the confused attitudes that Americans had toward the Vietnam war than any other film has come, and so its messiness seems honorable.

It's certainly not Francis Ford Coppola's most well-known war movie, but Gardens of Stone is a pretty decent one, and does feel somewhat underrated.

Although downbeat, this celebration of the US military is done so expertly you forget that at the time it is set Coppola's idea of a great film was You're A Big Boy Now.

James Earl Jones, James Caan and D.B. Sweeney turn in superior performances in "Gardens of Stone," but it's all for naught. Francis Coppola sabotages their efforts with a handsome but fragmentary film that can't decide which story to tell.

Though Coppola sticks to the principal narrative line and resists tangential, anecdotal episodes, he might as well have gone off in those directions for all the coherence he ultimately achieves.

Gardens of Stone, Francis Coppola's muddled meditation on the Vietnam War, seems to take its name not so much from the Arlington Memorial Cemetery, where much of the action takes place, but from the stiffness of the characters it portrays.