Tim O'Brien'sThe Things They Carried
movies about the vietnam war
Apocolypse
Now
(1979). The horror, the horror. Francis Ford Coppola
disappeared into
the Philippine jungle and emerged 2 years later with this film,
possibly his greatest work. Based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness,
the story follows Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) as he journeys upriver
in search of the mysterious -- and completely insane -- Colonel Kurtz
(Marlon Brando). His mission: terminate Kurtz -- "with extreme
prejudice.
Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Marine Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise in an Oscar-nominated performance) returns from Vietnam a quadraplegic. After months of hellish rehabilitation, he finds renewed purpose protesting the war he once proudly fought. Born on the Fourth of July stands as the middle chapter in director Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy (preceded by Platoon and followed by Heaven & Earth).
Choosing Sides: I Remember Vietnam (2005). Seven Americans with distinctly different Vietnam War experiences tell their stories in this documentary. Through personal accounts and historic footage, the film chronicles the seven diverging paths that lead the storytellers to a Purple Heart, a dishonorable discharge, a jail cell, a protest march, a political debacle, a foreign land and a wheelchair. The film provides a revealing look at how war shapes and alters an individual's choices.
Coming Home (1978). While her husband is in Vietnam, Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda) volunteers at a veteran's clinic, where she encounters embittered paraplegic Luke Martin (Jon Voight). Sally begins to feel progressively disconnected from her spouse and embarks on an emotional and physical affair with Luke. When Sally's husband returns, however, the trio must contend with a new reality -- and with a country that turned its back on America's fighting men.
Daughter from Danang (2005). In 1975, with the end of the war in Vietnam imminent, Mai Thi Kim, a poor, young Vietnamese woman, sent her seven-year-old daughter to America as part of a controversial evacuation program known as Operation Babylift. The parting was devastating to both mother and child, but Kim believed her Amerasian daughter -- the product of a brief love affair with an American Navy officer -- would be in danger in Vietnam. The little girl was adopted by a single woman, renamed Heidi and brought up in Tennessee, where she concealed her Asian past and became "101%" American. Twenty-two years later, Heidi tracked down her birth mother and visited Danang. The reunion that had raised so many hopes and expectations for Heidi and Kim quickly became rife with tension and misunderstanding as the cultural gulf between Heidi and her Vietnamese family grew larger and larger. To visit a PBS web site on this film click here.
Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. The gamut of emotion experienced by Vietnam veterans is strikingly captured in filmmaker Bill Couturie's poignant documentary, which features a host of celebrated actors -- including Robert De Niro and Sean Penn -- reciting selected correspondence from American participants in the conflict. Set to a 1960s soundtrack and accompanied by news footage, still photos and home movies, these readings create an honest snapshot of a tumultuous time.
The Deerhunter (1978). A group of working-class pals decide to enlist in the army during the Vietnam War and find it to be hellish chaos -- not the noble venture they imagined. One of the survivors (Robert De Niro) must return to Saigon to save a shattered pal (Christopher Walken) from certain death in a Russian roulette club. An Oscar-winning epic, The Deer Hunter shows the heavy toll the conflict exacted on soldiers and civilians.
The Fog of War (2003). Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara worked for both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, playing a key role in shaping both administrations' approaches to the Vietnam War. This Oscar-winning documentary directed by Errol Morris traces McNamara's career from government to the World Bank; but it's his work during the Vietnam years that's highlighted in this film, which features extensive archival footage and interviews.
Full Metal Jacket (1987). One of the most authentic portraits of warfare ever captured on film, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket teems with howling madness, stark images and troubling questions about duty, honor and sacrifice. Raw recruits (including Matthew Modine) suffer the grueling ordeal of basic training and battle with the Viet Cong over the city of Hue during the Tet Offensive.
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987). When his manic radio show proves a colossal morale-booster, Armed Forces Radio deejay Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams) gets sent to Vietnam. His monkeyshines -- lampooning any and all sacred cows -- tickle the troops but land him in hot water with his superiors, who'd like the broadcast to be sanitized and uncontroversial. Then, after encountering war's horror firsthand, Cronauer makes the egregious mistake of telling his audience the truth.
Heaven & Earth (1993). This is the third in Oliver Stone's trilogy about Vietnam. Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July were the first two. Fleeing the atrocities of the Viet Cong, Le Ly and her mother journey south to Saigon. Soon after, Le Ly becomes pregnant with her new master's child and begins selling her body to American soldiers to make ends meet. She then meets Steve Butler (Tommy Lee Jones), who convinces her to move back with him to the United States to start a better life.
National Geographic: Vietnam's Unseen War: Pictures from the Other Side (2002). You haven't seen everything there is to see about the Vietnam War if you haven't viewed this sobering documentary from the highly regarded National Geographic team of filmmakers. Complementing the recently released book Another Vietnam, this DVD captures the war as seen through the eyes (and lenses) of Vietnamese photographers.
Platoon (1986). A young, untested soldier (Charlie Sheen) steps off a troop transport in Vietnam and quickly learns that the first casualty of war is innocence. Writer-director Oliver Stone put himself on the Hollywood map (and won several Academy Awards) with this autobiographical account of his own tumultuous tour of duty in Vietnam. Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe excel as battle-hardened sergeants who offer Sheen starkly differing role models.
Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times (2002). The focus here is on intellectual Noam Chomsky and his post-9/11 political views. The documentary includes an in-depth personal interview, along with snippets from lectures Chomsky delivered around the country in 2001-2002. Known more for his stance as a political theorist and charismatic speaker than for his work as an M.I.T. linguist, Chomsky is revered by academics, intellectuals and leftist thinkers around the world.
A Soldier's Sweetheart (1998). A movie version of the chapter entitled "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" starring Kiefer Sutherland and Georgina Cates. Reviewers liked the first half, but found the ending beyond belief, but of course, that's equally true of the short story.
The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002). This documentary based on journalist Christopher Hitchens's book argues that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was a warmonger responsible for massive military cover-ups in Vietnam, Cambodia and East Timor, as well as the assassination of a Chilean leader in 1970. The film includes interviews with historians, political analysts and such journalists as William Safire (The New York Times), a former Nixon speechwriter.
Vietnam: A Television History (4-Disc Series) (2004). Fascinating and heart-wrenching in its attention to detail, this in-depth documentary, which first aired on public television in 1983, unfolds in all its painful glory the American military bête noire that is Vietnam. The show chronicles the country's failed efforts to install an anti-Communist government, a losing battle almost from the moment it started as soldiers grappled with unfamiliar terrain, guerilla tactics, murky politics and more.
Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite (3-Disc Series) (2003). This program provides television news coverage produced during the Vietnam War and originally aired on CBS, hosted by Walter Cronkite. The clips bring home the effects of the war, showing what life was like for soldiers, their families, and citizens opposed to the war, as well provide a glimpse into the mood of the American public during this period.
Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Marine Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise in an Oscar-nominated performance) returns from Vietnam a quadraplegic. After months of hellish rehabilitation, he finds renewed purpose protesting the war he once proudly fought. Born on the Fourth of July stands as the middle chapter in director Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy (preceded by Platoon and followed by Heaven & Earth).
Choosing Sides: I Remember Vietnam (2005). Seven Americans with distinctly different Vietnam War experiences tell their stories in this documentary. Through personal accounts and historic footage, the film chronicles the seven diverging paths that lead the storytellers to a Purple Heart, a dishonorable discharge, a jail cell, a protest march, a political debacle, a foreign land and a wheelchair. The film provides a revealing look at how war shapes and alters an individual's choices.
Coming Home (1978). While her husband is in Vietnam, Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda) volunteers at a veteran's clinic, where she encounters embittered paraplegic Luke Martin (Jon Voight). Sally begins to feel progressively disconnected from her spouse and embarks on an emotional and physical affair with Luke. When Sally's husband returns, however, the trio must contend with a new reality -- and with a country that turned its back on America's fighting men.
Daughter from Danang (2005). In 1975, with the end of the war in Vietnam imminent, Mai Thi Kim, a poor, young Vietnamese woman, sent her seven-year-old daughter to America as part of a controversial evacuation program known as Operation Babylift. The parting was devastating to both mother and child, but Kim believed her Amerasian daughter -- the product of a brief love affair with an American Navy officer -- would be in danger in Vietnam. The little girl was adopted by a single woman, renamed Heidi and brought up in Tennessee, where she concealed her Asian past and became "101%" American. Twenty-two years later, Heidi tracked down her birth mother and visited Danang. The reunion that had raised so many hopes and expectations for Heidi and Kim quickly became rife with tension and misunderstanding as the cultural gulf between Heidi and her Vietnamese family grew larger and larger. To visit a PBS web site on this film click here.
Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. The gamut of emotion experienced by Vietnam veterans is strikingly captured in filmmaker Bill Couturie's poignant documentary, which features a host of celebrated actors -- including Robert De Niro and Sean Penn -- reciting selected correspondence from American participants in the conflict. Set to a 1960s soundtrack and accompanied by news footage, still photos and home movies, these readings create an honest snapshot of a tumultuous time.
The Deerhunter (1978). A group of working-class pals decide to enlist in the army during the Vietnam War and find it to be hellish chaos -- not the noble venture they imagined. One of the survivors (Robert De Niro) must return to Saigon to save a shattered pal (Christopher Walken) from certain death in a Russian roulette club. An Oscar-winning epic, The Deer Hunter shows the heavy toll the conflict exacted on soldiers and civilians.
The Fog of War (2003). Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara worked for both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, playing a key role in shaping both administrations' approaches to the Vietnam War. This Oscar-winning documentary directed by Errol Morris traces McNamara's career from government to the World Bank; but it's his work during the Vietnam years that's highlighted in this film, which features extensive archival footage and interviews.
Full Metal Jacket (1987). One of the most authentic portraits of warfare ever captured on film, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket teems with howling madness, stark images and troubling questions about duty, honor and sacrifice. Raw recruits (including Matthew Modine) suffer the grueling ordeal of basic training and battle with the Viet Cong over the city of Hue during the Tet Offensive.
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987). When his manic radio show proves a colossal morale-booster, Armed Forces Radio deejay Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams) gets sent to Vietnam. His monkeyshines -- lampooning any and all sacred cows -- tickle the troops but land him in hot water with his superiors, who'd like the broadcast to be sanitized and uncontroversial. Then, after encountering war's horror firsthand, Cronauer makes the egregious mistake of telling his audience the truth.
Heaven & Earth (1993). This is the third in Oliver Stone's trilogy about Vietnam. Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July were the first two. Fleeing the atrocities of the Viet Cong, Le Ly and her mother journey south to Saigon. Soon after, Le Ly becomes pregnant with her new master's child and begins selling her body to American soldiers to make ends meet. She then meets Steve Butler (Tommy Lee Jones), who convinces her to move back with him to the United States to start a better life.
National Geographic: Vietnam's Unseen War: Pictures from the Other Side (2002). You haven't seen everything there is to see about the Vietnam War if you haven't viewed this sobering documentary from the highly regarded National Geographic team of filmmakers. Complementing the recently released book Another Vietnam, this DVD captures the war as seen through the eyes (and lenses) of Vietnamese photographers.
Platoon (1986). A young, untested soldier (Charlie Sheen) steps off a troop transport in Vietnam and quickly learns that the first casualty of war is innocence. Writer-director Oliver Stone put himself on the Hollywood map (and won several Academy Awards) with this autobiographical account of his own tumultuous tour of duty in Vietnam. Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe excel as battle-hardened sergeants who offer Sheen starkly differing role models.
Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times (2002). The focus here is on intellectual Noam Chomsky and his post-9/11 political views. The documentary includes an in-depth personal interview, along with snippets from lectures Chomsky delivered around the country in 2001-2002. Known more for his stance as a political theorist and charismatic speaker than for his work as an M.I.T. linguist, Chomsky is revered by academics, intellectuals and leftist thinkers around the world.
A Soldier's Sweetheart (1998). A movie version of the chapter entitled "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" starring Kiefer Sutherland and Georgina Cates. Reviewers liked the first half, but found the ending beyond belief, but of course, that's equally true of the short story.
The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002). This documentary based on journalist Christopher Hitchens's book argues that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was a warmonger responsible for massive military cover-ups in Vietnam, Cambodia and East Timor, as well as the assassination of a Chilean leader in 1970. The film includes interviews with historians, political analysts and such journalists as William Safire (The New York Times), a former Nixon speechwriter.
Vietnam: A Television History (4-Disc Series) (2004). Fascinating and heart-wrenching in its attention to detail, this in-depth documentary, which first aired on public television in 1983, unfolds in all its painful glory the American military bête noire that is Vietnam. The show chronicles the country's failed efforts to install an anti-Communist government, a losing battle almost from the moment it started as soldiers grappled with unfamiliar terrain, guerilla tactics, murky politics and more.
Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite (3-Disc Series) (2003). This program provides television news coverage produced during the Vietnam War and originally aired on CBS, hosted by Walter Cronkite. The clips bring home the effects of the war, showing what life was like for soldiers, their families, and citizens opposed to the war, as well provide a glimpse into the mood of the American public during this period.