Here are excerpts from conversations with Wallace, 52, and two-time Oscar winner Gibson, 46, who plays Moore.
Q: The movie is based on the 1992
best seller co-written by Moore, "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Randall, what were your goals in adapting it for the screen?
Wallace: [To] help heal the wounds left by that war. [I hope] those healed the most will be those wounded the most -- the soldiers and the families of the soldiers who fought there.
Q: Emotional wounds? Physical?
Wallace: All of it. Noble impulses led us there. The [President] Kennedy speech of "Let the world know that we'll bear any burden and pay any price for freedom" was one of the things that drew us there. The American spirit was wounded in that war.
Gibson: From everyone I've met, there are deep emotional scars there. And they're alive and well, as if it was yesterday. They were treated badly. They were ordered to do a certain thing and then had the rug pulled out from under them and told they were [worthless]. I don't think they're looking for people to say, "You did the right thing." They just need to be recognized as having dealt with a problem because they were ordered to, and honored in that way. There needs to be some healing.
Q: How will your film help us heal?
Wallace: This movie expresses nobility. War is a tragedy, and, like other tragedies, there are always individuals who rise up to affirm what's noble and lasting in the human spirit. And this a story about the noble and the lasting.
Q: Will "We Were Soldiers" have more power and meaning now that the United States is once again at war?
Wallace: Yes. We went into production for this movie long before Sept. 11. But Sept. 11 reminded us in America that there is such thing as evil in the world. And such things as duty, honor and country.
Q: Honor, courage, bravery -- was there
a time when those things were lost?
Gibson: I don't think they were ever lost. They reside in many people -- even people who don't know that they reside there. It's just that the circumstances that really bring those things to the fore are not often presented to most folks, particularly in the easy society we have. You're going to see the best and the worst of human behavior in crisis situations, and it's arbitrary where it comes from.
Wallace: They're always there. They are often not fashionable. On Sept. 11, people suddenly remembered that policemen and firemen and soldiers are people who don't ask for respect but who give us all a service that we could not do without.
Q: It's a patriotic time, but are people really still interested in Vietnam movies?
Wallace: I'm not looking to define Vietnam. I'm really looking to talk about something broader and deeper: the inherent nobility of a soldier and a soldier's family. ... I don't think of myself as making war stories; I think of myself as telling love stories. War puts love in context. We as a people are sick of frivolity. We crave substance. When movies portray sound and fury and mayhem that we know in our hearts is false, then we're diminished as a people. I think that is destructive art, if it can be called art at all. I believe these stories are true, and that's why I tell them.
Q: You both have sons, and we're back in another amorphous war. Do you worry about your boys having to fight?
Wallace: Absolutely. I do not want my sons to ever have to be soldiers. But I do want them, and I want myself, to live for more than just the indulgence of our own comfort.
Gibson: I would wish no one should ever, ever have to go to war. I would hate to send my children to war. I would hate it. If it's for a just reason, so be it. I would still hate it, but it would be really awful if it wasn't a just cause. Only a madman would say otherwise.
