Roger Ebert, writing for the "Chicago Sun-Times", gave "We Were Soldiers" 3.5 stars out of 4, and praised its truthful and realistic battle scenes and how it follows the characters: ""Black Hawk Down" was criticized because the characters seemed hard to tell apart. "We Were Soldiers" doesn't have that problem; in the Hollywood tradition it identifies a few key players, casts them with stars, and follows their stories." Lisa Schwarzbaum, from "Entertainment Weekly", gave the film a B and noted its fair treatment of both sides: "The writer-director bestows honor – generously, apolitically – not only on the dead and still living American veterans who fought in Ia Drang, but also on their families, on their Vietnamese adversaries, and on the families of their adversaries too. Rarely has a foe been portrayed with such measured respect for a separate reality, which should come as a relief to critics (I'm one) of the enemy's facelessness in "Black Hawk Down"; vignettes of gallantry among Vietnamese soldiers and such humanizing visual details as a Vietnamese sweetheart's photograph left behind, in no way interfere with the primary, rousing saga of a fine American leader who kept his promise to his men to 'leave no one behind dead or alive.'"