Paradise now

This one was interesting to me. I felt that there was no real plot or meaning to the movie. Throughout the movie we see the same trend over and over. Our main characters "numbers come up" and they are thrown into the world of suicide bombing. They prepare, suit up, and make an attempt and are later forced to flake out. They try a second time after a long man hunt for our main character and a similar thing happens. However, in the end we see a change. The character who was originally gung ho about the idea of the bombing has second thoughts. The character who wanted to flake out or was nervous about the bombing decides he has to do it (to regain his honor or something else, the real reason wasnt very clear to me). In the end, the character that turned into a flake chickens out and is locked into a car while the character who as suddenly discovered a sense of purpose and courage goes off to complete his mission or we are lead to believe as we never see a real explosion.

What was the point? I am not really sure which is frustrating to me since I am generally pretty good at picking out the "true" meaning of a movie or story, or at least making up something that sounds good and/or right. This movie was not one of my favorites and I would much rather forget I saw it than have to think about it again.