The "Baltimore Sun" said the film "overstays its welcome by at least a third... so oozes with testosterone that your TV screen may start sprouting facial hair... Milius gets so caught up in the male bonding, in relishing the way war makes men of boys and brothers of men, that he forgets there's a story to be told. In the end, what could have been a top-notch film about a brief little war, whose lasting import far outweighed its immediate impact, becomes an exercise in the minutiae of battle."