oh yeah, i do believe "Vietnam" is one word. V-e-i-t-n-a-m. If your going to ramble on about it you might as well spell it right


Excellent, thought-provoking.   April 24, 2000
 0 out of 1 found this review helpful

I grew up just a few years younger than the young men and women who were being sent to Viet Nam to fight. Seeing this movie takes me back to that time, when here in America there was truly alot of prosperity and peace, or so we thought. The Viet Nam war was pretty much kept behind the scenes by government and media. I feel guilty now, when I look back and realize what a great time the rest of us were having here, while these young guys were having their whole lives destroyed for nothing! I wish I could go back, and have made a difference, I wish I could have eased just a little of the suffering. I think most of the reviews here must have been written by people of a later generation. They just cannot understand the innocence that was lost during that period of time in America. They see the aftermath, and accept it as the was it has always been, but that is not the case. Cruise's character said it best when after fighting in the wheelchairs and falling down the hill, he talks to Charlie about the was it used to be, well, that is the way it used to be. The war changed so much about our country, it took the innocence forever.


Quite disapointing!   March 27, 2000
 5 out of 13 found this review helpful

I do not watch many films and as such I had never seen this. When I do watch a film, I try to select only the best. So when a respected friend of mine of the Viet Nam generation told me about showing it to this to his 18 year old son, I decided to watch it also. I was quite disapointed. I thought that the film was overacted, and the extensive use of the "F-word" distracting. I could not help but feel sorry for Tom Cruies' character, but at times he appeared like a "poor little ole-me drunk". I could not but help identify with X-marine who told him to get his act together with refernece to Iwo Gima. Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to minimize the trama that Viet Nam vets went through. And these people deserve our respect. But Tom Hank's character in Saving Private Ryan caught the gutwretching reality of war much better and with greater respect as he quietly pondered the lives lost of those under his command. If Stone could have turned down the volume and avoided such politically motivated fictionalizations (e.g., protest on the republican convention floor), the movie would have been much better and communicated a far more sensitve truth. The movie demeans these veterens who deserve far better for the horrors they had to endure.