The John Wayne Quote From a 1968 War Movie Classic That Redefined the War Genre (In a Bad Way)

We've been covering a lot of John Wayne here lately. That kind of happens when you do one article on a legend and then have to dive into the movies that made them.

Well, Wayne was the prototype for American Westerns and cowboy movies.

But when he stepped out of that genre, his persona didn't walk away from the real world of his other movies.

One memorable time was his starring role in The Green Berets , a movie that would not go down in history the way Wayne would want. It was a film cooked up by John Wayne to serve as a massive, flag-waving recruitment ad for the Vietnam War.

And it gave us a line that actually came to define everything wrong with the war itself:

"Out here, due process is a bullet."

Let’s dive in.

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The Ultimate Propaganda Machine

Look, the United States Military and Hollywood have worked together on many movies across many decades. We saw how Top Gun increased people signing up for the military, and there are lots more examples of this with Marvel, too.

But to understand why The Green Berets landed with such a thud, you have to look at the context of 1968.

America was going through the most tumultuous year in its existence.

The anti-war movement was reaching a boiling point.

For a little context: the Tet Offensive had just shattered the government's narrative that they were winning, and Hollywood was keeping its hands off the conflict because it was such a divisive issue.

So, naturally, John Wayne had a plan to help the United States fix its Vietnam image.

Wayne was a conservative star who was upset by the lack of pro-military support on the big screen. So he wrote a letter to President Lyndon B. Johnson requesting full military assistance to make a pro-war movie.

And he got it.

The Department of Defense gave the production with helicopters, uniforms, and heavy weaponry. Whatever they needed, they got, including turning the shoot at Fort Benning, Georgia, into a heavily subsidized state propaganda piece.

Which is just what Wayne wanted.

The plot is aggressively simple: a cynical, liberal journalist named George Beckworth (David Janssen) is sent to Vietnam to cover the war. He thinks the U.S. shouldn’t be there. The movie's entire mission is to break his spirit and force him to admit that American intervention is the only thing saving the world from total Communist domination.

It's a movie that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, even just reading about it.

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The Infamous Line

Vietnam was a conflict rife with tragedy and controversy. In many ways, America is still dealing with the open wounds that war left on it and how its echoes through wars long after.

The line happens when Beckworth witnesses the brutal interrogation of a suspected Viet Cong spy inside the American camp. He's horrified by the lack of legal standards, and the journalist starts whining about human rights and legal protocol.

Wayne, playing the tough-as-nails Colonel Mike Kirby, turns to him and spits out the line: "Out here, due process is a bullet."

On a screenwriting level, it’s designed to be the ultimate badass moment.

But the sentiment around the war was that it was too brutal, and it felt like it had gone off the rails.

That line admits that the U.S. military was operating outside the boundaries of international law, yet frames that lawlessness as something to celebrate.

And audiences did not enjoy going along with it.

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The Legacy of a Creative Trainwreck

Unsurprisingly, critics absolutely eviscerated the movie. The New York Times famously called it "unspeakable, stupid, rotten, and false in every detail."

But the most damning reviews came from the actual soldiers fighting the war.

Vietnam veterans who watched the film "in-country" or immediately after returning home found the movie to be a complete farce.

Real combat veterans, including Hollywood military consultant Dale Dye, cited the cartoonish, cowboy-and-Indian depiction of war in The Green Berets as the exact type of dishonest filmmaking they wanted to eradicate from Hollywood.

In an interview with the Military Officers Association of America, Dye said:

"So, while it may be partially about fantasies, Hollywood intrigued me and allowed me to further an agenda. I had seen practically every military movie, but most of them pissed me off because I didn’t think it was an accurate or fair portrayal of the men and women that I served with."

Even after all this, if you want to watch this movie, it's kind of a great example of the American military machine, using real-life weapons and vehicles to tell a story.

It's not a good film, but there are some awe-inspiring shots and scope and scale of set pieces that are only possible through collaboration with the military.

Summing It All Up

For decades following its release, filmmakers had to completely reinvent the genre to scrub away the stain of Wayne’s movie.

And even the US Military sort of shied away from these kinds of direct propaganda movies, although they come in as consultants on projects.

What's funny is, I do wonder if this movie would have survived or been largely ignored without that line, which became part of the cultural anger around the war itself instead of being a lightning rod written to endorse our work in that conflict.

Let me know what you think in the comments.