America wasnt always seen as the good guy...

In this movie I feel like I was better able to understand the feelings of many of the men in the war. In movies everything is so sensationalized that it is hard to make sense of it all. In this one, however, the men are easy to access because of the settings that they are in. The jumps between movies and real life makes this movie easy to understand and very informative. I liked this movie much better then Full Metal Jacket or Platoon, because I was able to know that what these men went through is real and it was not as graphic. It also shows what many of the Vietnamese people were thinking and feeling, “First they bomb as much as they please. Then they film.” Vietnam was torn apart, families in both Vietnam and America were torn apart, houses were torn apart, people were torn apart.
The way that the movie is sequenced is very good rhetorically. The very short clips of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon are all different in what they are saying about the war, and the way they are approaching it. It seems that the progression of the war went along with the harshness of what the presidents were saying.
Then a scene that has the men marching allows us to see the sentiments of many of Americans prior to the Vietnam War. America had just come out victorious and as they sang in the movie it “wouldn’t stop until all the world is free.” The absurdity of all of the men marching along in time with each other singing a happy song is truly astounding. However, you have to keep in mind that movies are made so that people will watch them; this movie shows the great passion that Americans had right after WW II, that Americans wanted to set the whole world free from communist rule. Every so often a scene from a movie is shown, allowing us to see what the dramatized version of events were.
The scenes that are of Americans that were in the war, or a large part of the war, are always serene and calm. They are usually alone and always well put together. They are given the feel of people that are well informed and a little colder then normal people. They are not in a natural setting. General William Westmoreland who was the Commanding General for the Vietnam War from 1964-1968 is sitting next to a tranquil lake while talking about his time before going to war. A man who went on 98 bombing missions sits on steps while casually talking about the excitement of the explosions from the bombs and how it was exciting to be in a life and death situation. The settings are there with a distinct purpose to propose the idea that Americans in the war are not affected in the same ways as the Vietnamese were.
The Vietnamese are portrayed as a people struggling to gain independence just as Americans once did. America and Americans are shown as the aggressor who cares for nothing but winning.