War movie fans, help me out here!

[BuelahWitch]

I have to watch a movie about Vietnam for a history class. Can you tell me which of the ones below have the least amount of blood and gore in them?

Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick-director)

Platoon (Oliver Stone-director)

Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino-director)

The Anderson Platoon (Pierre Schoendorffer-director)

Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola-director)

The Abandoned Field-Free Fire Zone (Hong Sen-director) {difficult to find—Vietnam Feature Film Studios}

Hamburger Hill (John Irving-director)

Bloods of Nam (videotape at KCKCC)

When We Were Soldiers

I thought we were going to report on a WWII film, but my instructor changed her mind, so I have to send Claudette Colbert and Shirley Temple back to Netflix and get one of these. I'm not fond of bloody movies, whether they're realistic situations or not. You can call me all the names you want, I still don't want to see people's heads exploding.
Any help you can give is appreciated.

[WilliamPitt]

1. The Deer Hunter

has a couple of scenes that are really hard to watch, but 90% of the movie is about the effect of war upon people, communities and sanity. On balance, it is the least graphic of them all. To really appreciate it, however, you need to know a little something about Pennsylvania/Pittsburgh in the early 1970s.

The rest are real shoot-outs...although the first half of Full Metal Jacket stands as some of the best scenes ever filmed.

My name is Gunnery Seargent Hartman...

[Howardx]

7. "the jungian thing sir!"

great great movie

[WilliamPitt]

9. We have to keep our heads until this peace craze blows over

[cool user name]

14. Great movie!!!!

This is classic:

Pogue Colonel: Marine, what is that button on your body armor?
Private Joker: A peace symbol, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Where'd you get it?
Private Joker: I don't remember, sir.
Pogue Colonel: What is that you've got written on your helmet?
Private Joker: "Born to Kill", sir.
Pogue Colonel: You write "Born to Kill" on your helmet and you wear a peace button. What's that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?
Private Joker: No, sir.
Pogue Colonel: You'd better get your head and your ass wired together, or I will take a giant shit on you.
Private Joker: Yes, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Now answer my question or you'll be standing tall before the man.
Private Joker: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.
Pogue Colonel: The what?
Private Joker: The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Whose side are you on, son?
Private Joker: Our side, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Don't you love your country?
Private Joker: Yes, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Then how about getting with the program? Why don't you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?
Private Joker: Yes, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Son, all I've ever asked of my marines is that they obey my orders as they would the word of God. We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out. It's a hardball world, son. We've gotta keep our heads until this peace craze blows over.
Private Joker: Aye-aye, sir.

[Howardx]

29. "obey my orders as they would the word of God"

haha im off to see the damned tonight but maybe i'll watch that again tomorrow!

[cool user name]

37. The Damned?

"Under the Floor Again"

[pacalo]

31. "Deer Hunter" -- most definitely.

Please turn your head during the Russian Roulette scene in Vietnam, though.

I loved the analogy of the group of Pennsylvanian friends who loved to go on their hunting trips together to score a deer, three of which were soon going to Vietnam, & the effects of having been forced as captives to play Russian Roulette. I felt as though the roulette experience put them in the place of the defenseless hunted. When Robert DeNiro's character returned to Pennsylvania, & the reunited friends went deer hunting, he took aim at a magnificent deer paused on a hilltop just yards away, an easy shot, but DeNiro couldn't bring himself to shoot the deer.

Then, there was his close Pennsylvanian friend who was still in Vietnam, whose experience with the Russian Roulette game took him in another direction. I won't spoil this for you, but there's an analogy there, as well.

[Blue_In_AK]

2. I'm not familiar with 4, 6 or 8

but the rest of them are all pretty bloody. I don't think there's any way you can get around blood when you're dealing with war.

ed. Yes, Deer Hunter is not as bloody, but it'll hit you like a ton of bricks.

[Blue_Tires]

3. another good movie idea (not a whole lot of blood)

is "Born on the Fourth of July"--Oliver Stone

[WilliamPitt]

8. ABSOLUTELY agreed

That movie is the reason why I give all of Tom Cruise's idiocy a pass. His playing of Ron Kovic was magnificent.

[chaumont58]

4. Maybe the worst made about and during VietNamWar was John Wayne's

aGreen Berets. It is mind numbingly bad. It could have been made in 1943, it so full of American propaganda. I hadn't seen it until a few years ago, on cable. It was released in 1968, I think, which could mean it was made in 1967 or earlier. If you do have to see it sometime, park your brain, you won't need it.

I saw Apocalypse Now when it was first release. It was one of the first movies I saw that had real dialog of how GIs talk.

[acmejack]

24. No doubt the Green Beret set new depths of crappiness.

[Howardx]

36. its no "in harm's way" for sure

n/t

[Blue_Tires]

5. another good one is

"Tigerland" --Joel Schumacher

[cool user name]

6. Full Metal Jacket (hands down)

Least amount of blood and guts, has a great story line to it but heavy on the language.

"She fucky sucky smoke a cigarette in her pussy" type of language.

[WilliamPitt]

12. Well...

There's the suicide, Cowboy, Doc-J, 8-Ball and the sniper. Pretty rough stuff.

[cool user name]

16. Yeah but not as much as say Platoon ...

... but you're right. I dismissed those out of hand.

[Burnsey_Koenig]

21. yea, but that scene in the bathroom

is one of the most emotionally draining and traumatic scenes in film. But it certainly isn't gratuitous.

[BuelahWitch]

44. Language doesn't bother me

Just bloody violence

[Ravenseye]

10. Does it have to include much combat?

You include the Deer Hunter...does Good Morning Vietnam count? Relatively bloodless.

[pinto]

11. Tough choices.

Deer Hunter is a good internally driven drama about the effects of war, and less graphic than the others. iirc, When We Were Soldiers is likewise, less graphic.

To be honest, though, if you can sit through one of the others, turn away if you must at times, they all have lots to say about this era in our history. Some 50,000 Americans died and untold numbers of Viet Namese, North and South, civilian and military.

(aside) I'm not familiar with The Anderson Platoon, Hong Sen's piece or Bloods of Nam.

[Blue-Jay]

An old boss of mine would recommend Full Metal Jacket

He claimed that it was the movie that seemed to be the "most true" compared to what he experienced. Then again, he was an asshole.

[Warpy]

13. Two more suggestions, nearly gore free

are "Coming Home" and "Birdy." Both are about Vietnam vets coming home and trying to cope with the insanity they left behind, along with physical and psychic wounds.

Those say more about what that stupid war really meant than all the shoot-em-ups out there.

[Blue_In_AK]

41. Birdy was a very sweet film, it made me cry.

[Auggie]

15. Full Metal Jacket

[Blue_Tires]

17. this is kind of a stretch but

you could add "MASH" -- Robert Altman director....

no matter who says what about Korea, that film was really about Vietnam

[Emit]

18. 'Coming Home' isn't one of the choices? n/t

[dddem]

19. What about Coming Home?

I never actually saw the whole thing, but wasn't it about how the war affected the soliders coming back and the wives left behond?

[Nomad559]

20. As I recall

Casualties of War had very little blood and gore scenes.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097027/

[Blue_Tires]

25. that was a good one i forgot to mention

[Blue_Tires]

22. oh wait i see you are in Lawrence!

KU graduate class of '01:hi:

[BuelahWitch]

47. Yeah I'm in Lawrence

What was your major?

[Blue_Tires]

50. journalism -- M.S.

nt

[LostinVA]

23. Deer Hunter is really racist and inaccurate

Full Metal Jacket is the best on the list, imo....

[Bad Penny]

26. See if you can find a copy of The Boys in Company C

Not a gore fest like the others but still has punch

[acmejack]

27. Does it have to be a classic? If not check out this one!

Sir, No Sir! (Has no violence)& is very cool...

snip>
The Oleo Strut was a coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas, from 1968 to 1972. Like its namesake, a shock absorber in helicopter landing gear, the Oleo Strut’s purpose was to help GIs land softly. Upon returning from Vietnam to Fort Hood, shell-shocked soldiers found solace amongst the Strut’s regulars, mostly fellow soldiers and a few civilian sympathizers. But it didn’t take long before shell shock turned into anger, and that anger into action. The GIs turned the Oleo Strut into one of Texas’s anti-war headquarters, publishing an underground anti-war newspaper, organizing boycotts, setting up a legal office, and leading peace marches.

David Zeiger was one of the civilians who helped run the Oleo Strut. He went on to a career in political activism and today, at 55, he is a filmmaker and the director of Sir! No Sir!, a new documentary on the all-but-forgotten antiwar activities of GIs from Fort Hood to Saigon. The GI Movement, as it was then known, was composed of both vets recently returned from Vietnam and active-duty soldiers. They fought for peace in ways big and small, from organizing leading anti-war organizations to wearing peace signs instead of dog tags. By the early ‘70s, opposition to the Vietnam War within the military and amongst veterans had grown so widespread that no one could credibly claim that opposing the war meant opposing the troops. Veterans wanted an end to the war; their brothers in Vietnam agreed.

Zeiger put off making this movie for years, convinced the public didn’t want to hear another story about the ‘60s. What finally spurred the project was the Iraq War and the role some Vietnam vets are playing in keeping America’s young men and women from seeing the same horrors they saw. When GIs from the current war started coming home and wondering what they’d been fighting for, Zeiger’s days at the Oleo Strut took on a new relevance. His film is a remarkable interweaving of vets’ stories about their intensifying resistance to the war, starting with the lone objectors of the late ‘60s and culminating with open disobedience throughout the ranks in the ‘70s. One vet even recalls an episode from 1972 in which Military Police joined enlisted men in burning an effigy of their commanding officer. The images that accompany such stories are just as powerful. As a young doctor is escorted into a military court for refusing to train GIs, hundreds of enlisted men lean out of nearby windows extending peace signs in support. It’s an image that the Army didn’t want the American people to see then, and probably wouldn’t want the American people to see today.

http://hnn.us/articles/31396.html

[Journeyman]

28. The Quiet American. . .

the book is a classic. . . the film:


Amazon.com
The Quiet American proves that elegant and intelligent filmmaking can be emotionally powerful. Michael Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a British journalist in 1950s Vietnam with a lovely Vietnamese mistress named Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen) and a jaded view of the political strife teeming around him. He befriends a seemingly innocuous American named Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), who falls in love with Phuong--and slowly, Pyle's real purpose in Vietnam becomes revealed. Fowler finds that, to hold on to the carefully balanced life he's created for himself, he must make choices he's long avoided. Caine and Fraser are both superb and give a human face to complicated politics; as a result, The Quiet American manages to be compelling as both history and a story about very specific people embroiled in a very personal conflict. An impressive film from director Philip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence, Patriot Games). --Bret Fetzer

Product Description
The acclaimed performances of two-time Academy Award(R)-winner Michael Caine (Best Supporting Actor, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, 1999; HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, 1986) and Brendan Fraser (THE MUMMY, GODS AND MONSTERS) power a stylish political thriller where love and war collide in Southeast Asia. Set in early 1950s Vietnam, a young American (Fraser) becomes entangled in a dangerous love triangle when he falls for the beautiful mistress of a British journalist (Caine). As war is waged around them, these three only sink deeper into a world of drugs, passion, and betrayal where nothing is as it seems. Based on the classic novel by Graham Greene -- you'll find yourself riveted by the fascinating intricacies and ever-developing intrigue of this outstanding motion picture.

[Howardx]

34. i liked this one

graham greene is great and i thought this was a pretty good retelling myself

[Blue_Tires]

51. good call

completely forgot about that one

[twilight_sailing]

30. For extra credit

you might want to read

In Touch
by John Steinbeck IV

Yep, that's the son of the famous John Steinbeck.


Outside of that, I'd go with Full Metal Jacket.

[electricmonk]

32. Go Tell the Spartans is another good one

Not too bloody. Tells the story of the early days of the war.
Go Tell the Spartans

Too bad A Rumor of War hasn't been released on DVD. That's another good movie.

[CitizenLeft]

33. has anyone mentioned "Casualties of War?"

...we watched that one for our film history class.

[Nomad559]

38. Yes

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2690384&mesg_id=2690488

:)

[CitizenLeft]

39. crap... I skimmed...

thanks!

[reichstag911]

35. Hearts and Minds

wouldn't be bad, either; it's a documentary ( http://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Minds-Collection-George-Coker/dp/B00006673L/sr=8-1/qid=1163292621/ref=sr_1_1/102-5471485-2167355?ie=UTF8&s=dvd ).

[dubykc]

40. Full Metal Jacket, without a doubt or second thought.

[Bryan]

42. Will they let you pick a film out yourself?

I'll hazard a guess that everybody in your class will probably gravitate to Full Metal Jacket or one of Oliver Stone's films, so if you want to stand out/brown-nose the instructor, you might want to check out The Quiet American (the 2002 version, I hasten to add).

It's about a dissolute British journalist who travels to French colonial Vietnam in the '50s, and winds up getting involved with an American aid worker who's secretly with the CIA. It doesn't deal with the war directly, so it may be outside the scope of your class, but it's excellent and very pointed in its depiction of the institutional attitudes that got the U.S. involved in the war (with some subtle parallels to our current conflict, if you want to work in that angle), and it doesn't have a lot of violence.

Somewhat more violent are A Bright Shining Lie and Go Tell the Spartans, but they're also smaller, low-budget films that the other students will probably sail past. They're both fairly realistic and worthwhile from a historical perspective, because both deal with the experience of "advisers" in the early '60s coming to grips with the instability of the South Vietnamese government and the mismanagement of the war.

Then again, if you've already got an A and/or you want to mess with the instructor, watch Rushmore and write about the Vietnam stuff in it.

"Say a prayer for Surf Boy, wherever he is..."
:)

[BuelahWitch]

45. LOL, no I don't already have an "A"

This instructor has been rather unpredictable. I think I will write her and ask about "Coming Home," The Quiet American or Good Morning Vietnam. I know the last two are probably available at Netflix. I'll have to check on Coming Home.

[KharmaTrain]

43. How About "Coming Home"

There wasn't any blood and guts in that movie...and deals with the traumas families had in living with that ugly war.

My faves of that genre are ones mentioned above...Deer Hunter and Full Metal Jacket as I felt they covered the times in a more complex way than the other movies. Platoon seemed the most contrived...going more for the visceral emotions through violence than using the violence to amplify other emotions.

[BuelahWitch]

46. Netflix has Coming Home

I've emailed my instructor to find out if that one is acceptable. If so, I think I'll use it.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!

[Poiuyt]

48. You don't have "The Losers" on your list

It's about a motorcycle gang that goes to VietNam to rescue someone. Doesn't that sound good? I saw it when it first came out when I was in high school. I don't remember much, but IMDB has this snipet of dialog:

Link Thomas: If only one of us wants to break out of his life you make a criminal out of him!
Limpy: Come on, Link. Forget it! We will not get alive out of here!
Chet Davis: No! They will kill us all and nobody will care!

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0066126/

[sarge43]

49. Deer Hunter

Some intense scenes, but not much actual combat horrors.

[daleo]

52. Go Tell the Spartans

A pretty early Viet Nam movie, with Burt Lancaster. Quite fascinating.

[TexasLawyer]

53. Where's Dr. Strangelove?

The best war movie ever. Or Seven Samurai? The second best war movie.

Sorry, I don't know the blood quotient for the listed movies. My movies are relatively bloodless, which is perhaps why they're not on the list.

[Broken_Hero]

54. a good friend of mine

told me the best Vietnam movie, which portryated what "he saw/felt/heard" while serving in 71-73....was Good Morning Vietnam...there is blood, but not much that I can remember...

[delete_bush]

55. 20 minutes of Forest Gump?

If you can go outside your list, "Dear America" was an incredible documentary, with letters narrated by actors such as De Niro and MJ Fox read while archival footage of the war is shown. It covered the full length and breadth of the war, with the added benefit of being real.

[Leopolds Ghost]

56. Not a Vietnam movie but... you should check out "The Thin Red Line"

From WWII. What are people's opinions on that movie? I recall it as
being relatively bloodless, but heartwrenching.

[1932]

57. Try Coming Home, Born on the 4th of July, In Country for a different angle

The Quiet American would also be pretty interesting.

[Recovered Repug]

58. "Garden of Stones" at least I think that was the name.

Had James Caan, James Earl Jones and a number of familiar faces that I can't place names for. It took place at Arlington Cemetary and showed the cost of war.

[Cobalt-60]

59. Those are all messy

For war sans gore you need 1940s movies like Sahara, Action in the North Atlantic, Wake Island, Passage to Marseilles, a Wing and a Prayer, or Gung Ho.
Any of the more propagandistic but none the less watchable features like Flying Tigers, the Fighting Sea bees, or even Air Force are probably good too, if accompanied by a bullsh*t warning.
There's no better war movie than the 1930s German All Quiet at the Western Front. (If you can't deal with the black and white, there is a passable 1979 version featuring Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine.)
A shorter lesson in the horrors of war is available in Cross of Iron, a nice Sam Peckinpah job about the German eastern front.

[SwingVoter2006]

60. "Full Metal Jacket"

Remarkably little gore.

The first half of the movie is as close as you can possibly get to experiencing real Basic Training, without actually experiencing real basic training. Gotta love R. Lee Ermey, even if he is a RW-er.

I saw virtually every 'Nam flick that came out in the 80's, and "Full Metal Jacket" is the only one I own.

"Platoon" was overrated IMHO.

"Apocalypse Now" is not a movie about Vietnam; it's a motion picture interpretation of Joseph Conrad's old novel, "Heart of Darkness", and only uses Vietnam as a metaphorical backdrop.

"Hamburger Hill" is probably too gory for your tastes.

I've yet to see "The Deer Hunter", nor "We Were Soldiers".

I am surprised your instructor is not having you watch documentaries about Vietnam. As a rule, hollywood entertainment makes for horrible history lessons; at least in terms of accuracy.

The exception being films like "Band of Brothers" which are based quite closely on real people and real events and don't take too much artistic license in terms of telling events as they actually happened. In many ways, "Band of Brothers" is a docudrama, and enormously well done to boot. Like FMJ, I own it. One of the only WW2 movies I think that is worth owning, and watching.

[kath]

61. Agree that it seems strange she wants you to watch the Hollywood version

of Vietnam rather than a documentary. Unless, of course, the plan is to have you write about the historical inaccuracies of the film, etc., or unless this is a course about *cultural* history or some such, rather than a hard-core history course.