Best Vietnam War Movie

Coincidentally, I was reminded of this movie just last night when VH-1 ran a David Spade SNL highlight show that included Sean Penn giving Spade a tattoo while he did his impersonation of M. Fox from that movie. "Sarge, wadda we doin' here?"

One thing I like about FMJ is that it takes a sort of absurdist, impressionistic look at a war in which some strange things happened. Oh, and the drill sergeant ripping Pyle a new one.

 

Holy balls, Platoon is winning. Egads.

 

Not a fan, eh?

 

I said on the first page I looked forward to a Platoon rant from you, although I did like it - but didn't vote for it.

 

'The Fog of War'

'The Quiet American'

 

Ermey, btw, was very good in a very different type of role, as the father of the victim in Dead Man Walking.

 

Made for HBO, bit nothing can top Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam. Simply amazing. The hardest thing to watch that I still couldn't turn off.

 

The first scene of Full Metal Jacket might be the very best first scene of any movie ever.
Who would have thought you could make a good movie about Nam in Great Britain?

 

Deer Hunter is a movie that people will still be talking about and watching 100 years from now. Tremendous piece of cinema. Ditto for Apocalypse Now. I don't think anything else mentioned here holds up long-term.

I remember when Deer Hunter came out, my dad was a volunteer fire fighter and a ton of the guys in the firehouse had served in Vietnam. They all went out and saw it together and loved it. That's gotta be some sort of compliment.

 

Curious to hear this rant, too. I love the film.

 

I've always wondered if Platoon would have been as successful if the US hadn't had a successful military engagment earlier in the 80s like Grenada. Reagan touted the Vietnam syndrome in his first campaign declaring that Vietnam veterans fought as bravely as those in any other wars and deserved to be treated with respect instead of scorn, apathy or even pity. Platoon, while melancholy, and admittedly hated by many Vietnam vets, allowed general audiences to see the war in a new light and helped launch at least a half-dozen quality Vietnam movies in the following years creating better understanding of what they went through.

 

Not a single mention of "Good Morning Vietnam" on this thread?