This massive 13 hour post-mortem of the then-still-quite-recent Vietnam tragedy was controversial as hell when it first came out. And I can see why – this film did indeed act as something of the accepted, official story of what the hell actually happened over there. Most of the major players, from McNamara, Dean Rusk, Westmoreland, old French Generals and surviving members of both the South and North Vietnamese governments are willing to go on the record. The most memorable stories, though, come from the foot soldiers on both side.
As a body of work, one can only be awed at this thing. (However I’ve come to admit that I’ll never truly be able to follow all the different coups and power shifts among the South Vietnamese government – indeed, that was part of the CIA’s problem right there!) Available via Netflix.
