Most people don't know Mel Gibson's We Were Soldiers is something of a prequel to 1987's Lethal Weapon -- not even the films' creators. But in Soldiers, Gibson plays Lieut. Col. Hal Moore, commander of U.S. troops at the 1965 Vietnam War battle of the Ia Drang Valley -- in which Weapon costar Danny Glover's Murtaugh fought. Weapon scribe Shane Black chose the conflict because he wanted the character to have survived ''the nastiest hand-to-hand combat'' of the war. Says Soldiers director Randall Wallace: ''I wasn't aware of the connection...but I'm not surprised [Black]picked the Ia Drang campaign to reference as a bloody and powerful battle.'' Wallace says that like most Americans he didn't know much about the battle when Weapon hit theaters -- and that he's honored by ''the privilege of getting to help tell this story.''
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