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Director Peter Davis assembles newsreels, interviews and footage shot in Vietnam and the US to create a searing and incisive thesis that carefully balances both the American and the Vietnamese experiences of the war.
Davis takes us from the real, hidden reasons for the war, through the horrors of the actual fighting itself, as he focuses on the mindset of both Vietnamese and American troops, and on to the devastating after-effects suffered by American veterans.
The film portrays the divisions within American society caused by the US’s disastrous extended intervention in the region. A firestorm of controversy greeted the film upon its initial release in the mid-1970s and it still has the capacity to ignite furious debate today, so effectively does the film transcend its specific subject to speak of war in general.