The Vietnam War on Film
The following is a list of films about the Vietnam War, including films concerning post-colonial conflict in Southeast Asia, the regional fallout from the war (such as the Khmer Rouge), and the experience of Vietnam veterans. I have included fictional and non-fictional films. I have not included documentaries shorter than 30 minutes or so--so 60 Minutes documentaries, for instance, are not included. The motivation behind its compilation is a course I was planning on literature about war in the twentieth century, and I got a bit carried away--I'm not a collector. This isn't a selective list of "good ones"; some are among the most widely acclaimed films ever; some are among the most disliked. This list does not necessarily include all movies about Vietnam in general, or all films by Vietnamese film-makers; The Scent of Green Papaya (Mui Du Du Xanh, dir. Ang Hun Tran, 1993), for instance, is not included; though it is about Vietnam, it is not about the War. When I don't know the film, I have tried to err on the side of inclusiveness. For general information about any of the films to which I haven't provided links, I suggest starting with an internet index of films such as the Internet Movie Database, or a video store such as Reel.com, Blockbuster, Amazon.com, or Borders.com. The Movie Review Query Engine is a great collection of on-line movie reviews.
Other indices or discussions of the Vietnam conflict on film include: Vietnam on Film and Television: Documentaries in the Library of Congress (a great list--though note that it was compiled in 1989); the The Sixties Project, a top-notch web site for either scholarly or non-academic web surfers, has an An Annotated Filmography of Sixties Political Films; UC Berkeley has on-line selected Filmographies of many war films, including Vietnam, as well as a bibliography of printed work on The War in Vietnam and the Movies ; and Eben Muse has an annotated index of films about Vietnam to go with his 1995 book The Land of Nam: The Vietnam War in American Film. Perhaps the most comprehensive book on the genre is Jean Jacques Malo and Tony Williams, Vietnam War Films: Over 600 Feature, Made-For-Tv, Pilot and Short Movies, 1939-1992. Another study, Vietnam at 24 Frames per Second, promises analyses of "over 400 films about the Vietnam War." A generally informative on-line essay on films about the Vietnam war is Stuart Kobak's Vietnam: The Hollywood Pariah from Films on Disc; another is Jean-Jacques Malo's review article of Linda Dittmar & Gene Michaud's book, From Hanoi to Hollywood: The Vietnam War in American Film. An excellent, recent article by Robert Templer called "Imagining Vietnam" discusses how Europeans and Americans have imagined Vietnam not only in film but also writing over the past 30 or so years. "Apocalypse Then: Vietnam Marketing War Films" is a New York Times article on films made by the North Vietnamese during the War.
For sites about the general history of the Vietnam conflict, PBS has an on-line history of the war called Battlefield: Vietnam. Vietnam Yesterday and Today is a excellent website with well-informed links to uncover literary and historical information. The Sixties Project, mentioned above, has a number of links and primary materials. Grover Furr's Vietnam War page has a good set of links, including some on the Korean War by way of contrast. The Virtual Wall is devoted to the Vietnam War memorial on the mall in Washington, D.C. (also see the documentary on Maya Lin, the wall's architect, and the Frontline documentary Vietnam Memorial, below). An extensive bibliography of printed materials about the war is kept on the Vietnam War Bibliography page. For sites on modern Vietnam, Vietgate and Things Asian both provide good starts. For sites about Vietnamese Film, leading to many excellent films not on this list, see the Film and Theatre section of Vietspace. One print resource I have come across (though I've not personally perused it, so this isn't an endorsement) is the Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War.
Other media: NPR, in their series on "Lost and Found Sound," has a story about a soldier who made audio recordings during his time in Vietnam.
If you can't find an English title of a Vietnamese film below, do a word search; I have listed them alphabetically under their Vietnamese titles, rather than the titles of the American releases. For suggestions, please from here or my homepage.
The 13th Mission, dir. Antonio Perez
Berkeley in the '60s, dir. Mark Kitchell (documentary, 1990)
Children of An Lac, dir. John Llewellyn Moxey (TV, 1980)
China Beach (TV Series, 1988)
Front Line: An Eyewitness Account of the Vietnam War, prod. David
Bradbury (documentary, with Neil Davis; 1980)
Hot Damn! (documentary/short)
Lethal Weapon 4, dir. Richard Donner (1998)
Limousine, dir. Augustin B. Ramos (short; 1984)
Long Journey Home, dir. Rod Holcomb (TV movie, 1983)
My Old Man's Place, dir. Edward Sherin (1971)
Operation Warzone, dir. David Prior (1991)
Redwood Curtain (TV, 1995)
Summertree, dir. Anthony Newley (1981)
Suspect, dir. Peter Yates (1987)
Terry Whitmore, for Example, dir. Bill Brodie (documentary, 1970)
Turtle Beach, dir. Stephen Wallace (a.k.a. The Killing Beach;
1991)
Welcome Home, dir. Franklin J. Shaffner (1989)
Which Way is East, dir. Dana Sachs and Lynne Sachs (documentary/short;
1994)