What is the best war movie about the Vietnam war?

Which of these three movies do you consider the best....

 

I think Platoon is the film that bests captures the experience (as I understand it) of fighting in Vietnam as a grunt. Pretty much everything is there: drugs, class divisions, camaraderie, corruption, futility, racism, atrocities, etc).

IMHO, Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket are the better films, but they are not Vietnam films per se. Both are cerebral, artsy films where Vietnam is the background rather than the main focus.

 

None of the above. I would say Breaker Morant.

 

Platoon.

Apocalypse Now is a better film, but it's not really about Vietnam, it's much deeper, they just set the source material there.

 

Platoon, far from it.
We Were Soldiers

 

Apocalypse Now is obviously the most artistically accomplished and enduring one.

Platoon is a kind of histrionic soap-opera approach to a war movie and, while it may have been original at the time, it has become cliched in the intervening years.

Full Metal Jacket is trying to say something about war and the human condition in its very clinical way, but I don't think it's successful and what it does manage to say is rather sophomoric.

I'm surprised you excluded The Deer Hunter.

I'm not sure if there has ever been a really good 'realistic' Vietnam combat movie. Maybe Hamburger Hill?

 

We Were Soldiers is, for me, easily the best Vietnam film. An accurate account
of the first major battle fought by the US, with remarkably realistic battle scenes,
it also covers the emotional toll the battle had on the wives and families of the
soldiers in the battle. A riveting film....

 

I'd vote for Tropic Thunder because it shows how VN movies have become parodies of themselves and serve a Hollywood agenda more than anyone else's.

Deer Hunter at one time was my favorite because I felt it captured the feel of a small town, but it's difficult to take it seriously anymore. The "Russian roulette" in particular is not a thing in terms of Vietnam, rendering the "just one shot" theme a bit idiotic. Apocalypse Now was always a hot mess, but I just preordered the 4K steelbook and I don't mind giving it another chance now that I'm older--see if anything resonates with me these days. FMJ doesn't qualify as a decent film, and my appreciation of Kubrick has run dry.

 

I liked ' We Were Soldiers' well enough but there were several bits in it that made me cringe.

One in particular:
Mel Gibson and company are in the thick of battle, bullets flying, explosions,smoke, helicopters whirling overhead..
A lone Vietnamese soldier is charging in towards them from 100 yards away.
Mel twirls around suddenly and shoots from the hip killing him instantly.

 

Platoon got my vote. Great picture and even better than the great Apocalypse Now -another big favorite, IMO. Full Metal Jacket is a good movie, but outclassed in this poll.

 

You're probably aware that The Deer Hunter started life as a script that had little to do with Vietnam -- it was a sort of existential suspense script about a vet who falls into an underground Russian roulette game in Las Vegas. Michael Deeley (who subsequently oversaw Blade Runner) seems to have been the one who had the idea of taking the game itself to Vietnam. I wonder whether the plan was partly to get in on what Deeley perceived as a coming Vietnam movie fad, as Apocalypse Now was in the middle of its tortuous editing process.

The Deer Hunter is above all a kind of fable about masculinity and the American self-image, I don't think it ever was meant to depict Vietnam realistically.

I agree with you that Tropic Thunder makes Platoon and We Were Soldiers, in particular, hard to sit through as it skewers them so thoroughly in its opening sequence.

 

When I was mobilizing for my army service in Iraq in 2004, they played this movie for our company for some reason. Its a good war movie, but Gibson never convinced me he had much at stake or really suffered for his experience -still a well made movie worth watching.

 

I love Tropic Thunder, I just re-watched it last week, but it in no way makes it difficult for me to still appreciate and enjoy Platoon and Apocalypse Now (or any other war movie for that matter). Different strokes and all that.

 

It's also a great modern re-imagining of the story of Christ and his sacrifice and resurrection.

 

The Siege of Firebase Gloria with R. Lee Ermey and Wings Hauser.

 

Apocalypse Now

As Coppola said

“It’s not about Vietnam, it IS Vietnam”

 

Coppola knew a lot about Jim Morrison and UCLA film school at a time when kids his age were learning about Vietnam the hard way. I don't think he ever bridged that divide--certainly not during the making of Apocalypse Now. But you're right that it is not about Vietnam. How could it be?

Absolutely, but they never won the Beijing Film Festival's coveted Crying Monkey award.

 

Hey, I'm just glad that Tobey McGuire won the ' MTV Best Movie Kiss Award' for his lip-locking smooch with Kirsten Dunst in ' Spiderman'

 

Apocalypse Now

 

We Were Soldiers

 

True, but a similar statement could be made about every other film coming out of Hollywood.

 

I liked that scene...a lot.

 

Little Dieter Needs To Fly and Hearts and Minds for me, both glorious and heartbreaking, although obviously not fiction.

Of the three listed, Apocalypse Now best captures the madness where you are never quite sure what is happening or why.

 

Is this 'Rescue Dawn' with Christian Bale or something else entirely?

 

"Season of the Whirlwind," a Vietnamese perspective. Obviously the storyline adheres to official policy, but the cinematography is great, with some amazing images. Too many American films treat the war as an American tragedy, in which the 2-3 million dead Vietnamese are merely an exotic backdrop.



I also find Stan Brakhage's "23rd Psalm Branch" compelling, although not easy to watch.