SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Jay A I for one really enjoyed this mini-series, from the first episode to the last, it really has a lot of entertainment value. For the record, I am a currently a double major in history and political science and I would most definitely recommend this to anyone who is interested.Warning: it is fairly one sided towards the American perspective, but that does not mar it in my opinion, it just requires a conscious acknowledgment of that prior to watching it. With that said, for entertainment value it was great ( 10/10 ), turn it up full blast and for a spilt second you might actually forget feel like you are there. The footage was great and very powerful at times.To get the most out of this mini-series I would suggest doing some reading prior to watching it (or after if you are truly impatient), but I believe most will have at least a working knowledge of what Vietnam was about. But like others have said, for a more in depth understanding of this war, it is critical to look somewhere else. Overall this was a thrilling documentary (or mini-series) that holds a lot of entertainment value and for those who can look past the one sided nature and biases of it, you will walk away satisfied. For the more cynical of critics, this may seem like a Hollywood production glorifying the war and justifying American heroes. However, for the most part this does not glorify the Vietnam but rather tries to recount history by jazzing it up a bit.

humbleradio Did I miss something here? This was an excellent production. As some stated, a 'must see' for students of history and those interested in the Vietnam War. It's a recollection, a compilation using home movie footage, archival footage, material released through FOIA, and plenty of other sources never before assembled together to present a very personal view of what it was like to fight in Vietnam and to be at home waiting for the loved one to return.A personal view. Judging by the criticisms of others here, complaining that the series is too patriotic or pro- American, I have to say, did you watch the same documentary as I did? Simply because the production focuses on American soldiers in this conflict does not make it jingoistic. It simply means it's from a perspective. Good grief, lighten up. What I saw were personal stories, stories of men asked - no, make that ordered, drafted into action for their country (in this case, the United States). Action most neither asked for nor wanted. Yet, action they fulfilled nevertheless. What I did NOT see was the flag waving jingoism many here are complaining about. If anything, this documentary illustrates the futility of that conflict and how the American leadership lacked the moral justification to order young men into battle. Yet, the men who were ordered to do so, did the best they could under the worst of circumstances, only to come home to the misguided anger, hate and violence of American protesters, which some of the comments here seem to side with. This is a well produced, illustrative and interesting production on the personal side of Americans in Vietnam, right up there with the outstanding works of PBS's "Vietnam A Television History" and Stanley Karnow's companion book.Like I said above, ignore the critics. See it.

phuonganhlara Only to 2 for this documentary, one for good quality and one for valuable history footage. But so annoying about what old men said about pride, sacrifice... like only them who can understand what is the sacrifice.Compare the lost of two sides, Viet Nam's lost is more considered not America - So please don't be proud of your lost.In the war, people died or fought for their purpose. You can said you died because your country asked you to died, but you can't say you killed anyone because country said you killed cause for something even undefined -That make no sense.We served it, we do what we asked to do - I'm sure soldiers of Hitler also could proud of them cause they served and do what government asked them to do and they thought they do for the country and the peace of the world too.

jasherjasher I liked this a lot. It seemed that the series strove to maintain a neutral point of view in regard to the causes and/or futility of the war while maintaining focus on the individuals they profiled, and in my opinion they largely succeeded. Unlike a previous reviewer, I did not find it to be overly narcissistic, pro-war, or even all that pro-American, though the focus was definitely on the American experience. Some time was also devoted to other factors, such as life for the families back home, protests and movements, and U.S. administration positions on the war at various points, though the main focus remained with the progress of the war and the battlefields themselves. Leaving the controversies aside, I thought that what the series tried to do -- portray the experiences of various individuals at certain key places and events in the war -- they did quite well. I also liked the graphics and illustrations and, as opposed to other documentaries I have seen, I thought that these were distributed well and did not get in the way of the real story. The CGI stuff was good and not overdone, in my opinion.The thing about Vietnam is that once you start discussing the controversies and what we now know to be untruths, it is a discussion without end, full of passion and short on facts, not because of the people discussing it but because the whole thing was based upon a twenty year series of lies and deceptions on the part of the governments involved. Wherever there are lies there will always be arguments, and the subject of the Vietnam war is proof positive of this on a massive scale. This series did not attempt to take any of that on, and wisely so. Though at times I found this irritating -- for instance, the neutral announcement of the events in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 as legal cause for Johnson's escalation, when we now know that at least one of the incidents never happened -- I could recognize it as necessary in telling the story. If they had taken on any one of the many controversies or governmental lies, it would have been a quicksand from which the series would not have recovered. I'm glad they didn't! It is good to remember that many of those fighting were not volunteers but draftees: it was a federal charge and prison time to dodge the draft. In that light, I do not think that talk of honor and duty is narcissistic or out of place: many did not choose the war, but were sent by force. These went in service to their *country* -- if not the war itself -- and acquitted themselves on a personal level largely with great honor, regardless of the legitimacy of the war or their belief in it. Many times in the series you hear the soldiers referring to the war as a lost cause, and yet they gave their lives for it, if only because that was what they personally felt was the honorable thing to do. I believe that this *personal* honor, courage and heroism on an *individual* level is what this series was trying to bring out, and I think it succeeded very well.I enjoyed this series in spite of its neutral point of view, and I think it was very nicely done given the incredibly controversial nature of the war and its premises. While I would NOT recommend this series as a primer on Vietnam, nor even a good outline or overview -- you'd be better off going to Wikipedia for that -- it did very well with what it tried to do, and it's well worth a watch if wartime documentaries are something you like. Enjoy!