Gardens of Stone (1987) review

During the Vietnam War years, three soldiers are stationed at Fort Myer, Virginia with the task of taking care of Arlington National Cemetery: Sergeant Major "Goody" Nelson (James Earl Jones) is a stern but sympathetic father figure to his men, Sergeant First Class Clell Hazard (James Caan) starts dating Washington Post reporter Samantha Davis (Anjelica Huston) but really wants to be transferred to Fort Benning and newbie Jack Willow (D. B. Sweeney) is determined to attend officer candidate school and fight overseas.  While Jones and Caan are good as wizened and worldly warriors (Hazard is an expert in exotic rugs), Sweeney is disappointing as the overly-enthusiastic youngster (whose eventual death is telegraphed from the very beginning) and the movie itself is a sluggish funereal march: characters briefly bring up the futility of fighting in Vietnam, everyone sighs, and then it trudges on.  If Coppola's 1979 masterpiece was about the insanity and horror of personally experiencing that conflict, this is the equivalent of reading about it in the newspaper by a rather disengaged journalist.