Best Vietnam War movie?

[unscratchedfoot]

gorn buddy, you need an update. Here is the list of vietnam movies going from good to bad though the top 3 are about equal:

1) We were soldiers (although it has fiction ending to it )
2) Hamburger Hill
3) Platoon
4) Full metal jacket (the bootcamp and sniper parts are good)
5) apocolypse now (we fastforwarded through the 2nd half of it cause fortunately my friend had seen it already and knew what to skip, only the beach attack and the cool general are worth watching. It's too bad they destroyed the 2nd half of it.)

Any other good vietnam movies? Its a sadly ignored by Hollywood piece of history I think. I haven't seen Deer Hunter and may rectify that in the next few days if possible.

By the way, I fell asleep halfway through forest gump which was lucky because I was starting to feel nauseous.

 

[Warman17]

I like We were Soldiers. It's on right now ^_^. I wonder if there was a lot of war movies on today(July the 4th)

 

[blindside]

I haven't seen Hamburger Hill but I heard its a very good movie. Full Metal Jacket was fantastic, as was Apocalypse Now. The story of Apocalypse could fit any war, it deals more with the effect of war on the man, but not really specifically the Vietnam War (after all it was based on a book, Heart of Darkness, which has nothing to do with Vietnam).

I did not like Platoon, I just felt that Charlie Sheen could not do what his father did. Willem Dafoe was awesome but I just love him in every role . Didn't like We Were Soldiers either. Perhaps it was Mel Gibson that turned me off but the movie just wasn't very good. It didn't hit me as hard as Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket.

I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but Born on the 4th of July was a very good movie. I believe Tom Cruise got an Oscar or nomination for that. It deals more with the man after he returns (lost both his legs) from the war and the negative reaction from the American people towards veterans. I haven't seen all of it but my mother said it was fantastic.

 

[Yom]

FMJ was good. Personally, the boot camp part was the best. Ermey came up with more insults than I've ever heard in my life .

BTW, I really don't see why the killing of the sniper was so dramatized. IIRC, the other soldiers called him 'hardcore'. What's so hardcore about putting someone out of their misery. If it were my decision, I would let her die there slowly for killing my friends (I understand her situation, but it's a dog-eat-dog world). IMO, what he did was compassionate. The soldier in the helicopter mowing down the civilians and kids was the 'hardcore' (in the sense that it's cold-blooded) one.

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

Forrest Gump was not a Vietnam War movie.

I put that one in there as a joke. It wasn't based on Vietnam, but it was a good movie.

 

[bobgote]

Although not vietnam war, more simply military in general, what did people think of Buffalo Soldiers?

 

[unscratchedfoot]

Why do people think apocolypse now is so good? LIke yeah, the beach attack was really cool but that was like the only good part of the whole movie and very short considering we had to watch 2 hours of boredom to see 5 minutes of coolness. The rest was like some hippies badly stoned on pot put together as a tribute to john lennon or something. I prefer stuff like Platoon because the whole movie is interesting, especially with Tom Berenger in it (although platoon has a slight fake feel to it, Tom's excellent acting made up for it). We were soldiers and hamburger hill are good old fashioned war and nothing is better than that.

 

[nonconformist]

Because Apocalypse Now mimics Vietnam for the watcher.
Apocalypse Now, and Vietnam can be descried as madness, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Full metal jacket - Surreal ending
The violent transition from civilian to conscripted soldier, then transition from nubi to veteran.

i found that "Forrest gump" to have lifted the nam section straight from "Born on 4th July"

 

[philippe]

apocalypse now REDUx and full metal jacket comes to mind

 

[nonconformist]

apocalypse now REDUx

Yeah, the Redux is in general better than the regular film, but you need to see all of (or some of) the versions befoe you can really appreciate it. For example, one of the versions has Kurtz's compound getting blown up to te tune of the Doors' "Come on baby, Light my fire".

 

[privatehudson]

I like most of them for different reasons as they all reflect different aspects of the conflict. From the Special forces and surreal war of Appocalypse now to the Marine street fighting and boot camp of Jacket to the Grunt's eye view of the war in Platoon. One I don't see mentioned (though it might have been since I forget it's name) starred Michael J Fox as a soldier who stopped a rape of a Vietnamese girl by his fellow soldiers which I thought was good.

Overall I'd go for FMJ for the first hour which just blew me away when I first saw it

 

[El Justo]

my uncle is a vietnam vet and i asked him which movie best depicted the authenticity of the war. he said Full Metal Jacket, hands down.

it accurately depicted the tet offensive and especially hue city and its mass destruction. stanley kubrick rocks.

i think forrest gump was a GREAT movie. see it if you haven't already.

i agree w/ scratchmyfoot...apocolypse now is overrated except for that beach scene. "VC don't surf!!!"

 

[AngryGerbil]

Apocalype Now was a good movie, but I felt it was much more about Martin Sheen and Marlin Brando than it was about the Vietnam War. It portrayed the american soldiers as a bunch of mindless savages. Now, I'm sure some of them were, but that movie made it seem like not one single person was sane in Vietnam.

We Were Soldiers is the opposite. Noone is insane in that movie. Everyone was AJ squared away gung-ho GI Joe. It probably has the best battle scences out of any of them though. I did like how it touched on the NVA's view of things. The point of the story (in the book) was lost in the movie. The NVA knew they were going to win the war, they just figured it would take 100 casualties from them to match one american casualty. The point in We Were Soldiers, was described briefly in the scene with the NVA colonel when he thought "these americans actually think they won this battle". That battle said to americans "Look! We can kill 10 of them for only one of us! We rule!" The battle said to the NVA, "Look it only took 10 of us to kill an american instead of 100, this is going to be easier than we thought." I felt this sentiment was lost in the book to movie translation.

Platoon also suffered from the anti-war slant a bit but I thought it was pretty good. It was the only Vienam movie I've seen where I really felt like I was there, sitting in the mud with bugs on my neck. It was much more personal and I think it had alot of "feeling" to it.

Hamburger Hill was also good, especially toward the end when you really got a sense of how futile their mission was. It also gave a more local view of things rather than the whole picture. You never really quite knew what exactly was going on, and I think that was the point.

I think Full Metal Jacket probably got it right. I too have relatives who were in Vietnam who say FMJ was more realistic. It didn't seem to have a political slant to it, and if it did, it was subtle. It showed the more urban scence of the war as opposed to the jungle fighting shown in Platoon. Joker is the best character out of anyone in any of the movies though because I think anyone can relate to him. People can identify with the way he acts. I also think that the fact that he is light hearted emphasises the scene when he shoots the sniper. Also, it had a good mix of sane and insane. I also agree that the second half of the movie was better. Although I give full props to R. Lee and what is quite possibly the most beautiful river of insults to ever flow from a person's mouth.

Overall my vote goes to FMJ. I think I'll go watch it now.

 

[nonconformist]

Apocalype Now was a good movie, but I felt it was much more about Martin Sheen and Marlin Brando than it was about the Vietnam War. It portrayed the american soldiers as a bunch of mindless savages. Now, I'm sure some of them were, but that movie made it seem like not one single person was sane in Vietnam.

But the thing is Kurtz is the sanest person in the film. From Lieutenant Colonel "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" Kilgore to Chef "I'm a saucier", Kurtz is the only person who has cmpletely detached himself from human emotions in order to fulfill his duty, and he sees what a sham and horror Vietnam was.

 

[AngryGerbil]

That's a good point and I agree. These scences with Kurtz bring things into perspective, but for the first 3 hours of the movie, (the parts without Kurtz) I'm sitting here thinking, "is anyone in the movie not a complete barbarian?" Maybe that's the point and I can appreciate that, but I guess I just felt it got old. I'm sure there were certainly some stupid drug addicted rapist murderer soldiers over there, but come on, not ALL of them were. I dunno, it just rubbed me the wrong way.

 

[unscratchedfoot]

We Were Soldiers is the opposite. Noone is insane in that movie. Everyone was AJ squared away gung-ho GI Joe. It probably has the best battle scences out of any of them though. I did like how it touched on the NVA's view of things. The point of the story (in the book) was lost in the movie. The NVA knew they were going to win the war, they just figured it would take 100 casualties from them to match one american casualty. The point in We Were Soldiers, was described briefly in the scene with the NVA colonel when he thought "these americans actually think they won this battle". That battle said to americans "Look! We can kill 10 of them for only one of us! We rule!" The battle said to the NVA, "Look it only took 10 of us to kill an american instead of 100, this is going to be easier than we thought." I felt this sentiment was lost in the book to movie translation.

AngryGerbil, that last part is not quite right. The most significant outcome of the Ia Drang battle was the Viet Cong (not NVA from what I remember, NVA entered the war later through the DMZ) decided they couldn't handle those kinds of losses and made a radical change of tactics to hit-and-run which they used for the rest of the war. They learned that concentrating their forces in a big battle just got them slaughtered by America air power and artillery. They tried again the big meatgrinder battle tactic a few times like in Tet and in some firebase attacks and they were served the same treatment resulting in mass casualties for PAVN forces. They movie really should have stated this lesson the VC learned in an epilogue as well as listing the total casualties for both sides.

 

[Immortal]

Im with marla, the deer hunter is the best one.

 

[unscratchedfoot]

Oh dear... I forgot quite possibly the best action movie ever made...
Rambo II

 

[stratego]

Born on the 4th of July!!