Movie Review

The makers of this film propose to help us understand the Vietnam War in less than one hour. They begin with a short history of the war, but their treatment is quite superficial. From this narrative, younger viewers can only conclude that bad political leaders dropped the United States into the Vietnam swamp for no apparant reason. The filmmakers do not deal with French colonialism, Vietnamese nationalism, revolutionary communism, or the Cold War context of containment and domestic anticommunism. The film then deals with the antiwar protests with a brief but more understandable summary. But in this segment the filmmakers exaggerate the critical role of the media while ignoring the fact that most of its members supported the war until 1968, if not later. Nor do they consider the effect and legacy of the peace movement in a balanced fashion.

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The filmmakers chose to interview antiwar participants in a session of shouting heads that runs far too long. The producers include in this group David Horowitz, a former peace activist and current New Right gadfly; he asserts that the antiwar leaders wanted the victory of totalitarianism in South Vietnam, and he argues that they were responsible for the fact that the Vietnamese Communists killed 2.5 million peasants because they forced the United States to withdraw from the war. His claims provoke spirited rebuttals from U.S. congressman Bobby Rush, a military veteran and former Black Panther leader, and Ruth Rosen, a former peace activist and professional historian. While this interlude of verbal mud wrestling injects a limited amount of life into the discussion, it will leave younger viewers unsure as to the justice of the war or the usefulness of the antiwar movement.

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