Customer Rating: 
Summary: Still Shocking & Devastatingly Relevant After All These Years
Comment: The Vietnam war was the most photographed and broadcast war in history. Nightly news arrived in our living rooms pretty much unfiltered documenting the shocking story day by day. Peter Davis set out to make a documentary about the conflict which sought to present the war without some sanitising voiceover filtering the impact. "Hearts & Minds" is the result.
The film simply documents both the shocking and the banal and despite there being nothing to link this film by ways of a voiceover it has an impressive narrative power. The images are very powerful. The infamous shot of the naked girl running naked from a napalm attack and the Vietcong man shot in the head are both shocking and iconographic still photos here shown as live and in motion, doubly shocking for being in vivid colour. This film has an extraordinary power.
What shocks most are the desperate justifications by Government officials and the blinding racist ignorance of some of the fighting people. Many see the people of Vietnam as less than human which must have shocked then and still does now. It is more incredible that this was completed before the war ended and yet there is an awful sense of finality about it.
The testaments of the Vietnamese people who have seen their families and loved ones die, and their homes and livlihoods destroyed are moving as are the American soldiers trying to piece together their lives after some shocking injuries. The film manages to find a voice for every experience of the war and gives none of them precidence, just a moment in front of an unblinking camera. The conclusions come from the undeniable fact that what is taking place is dreadfully wrong. Even the voices in favour seem unable to utterly justify their actions.
Watching in our world of media management and spin it seems impossible a war could be covered like this today. Yet despite this the war on terror hangs over this film like a cloud of burning napalm. The message today seems to conclude that nothing has been learnt and something similar has been taking place on the streets of Kabul and Bagdhad for the past few years. You may never get to see the truth of that but here is a very good indication of what the reality of that, or any conflict, must be like for all involved.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bush and Blair
Comment: Its not difficult to fathom the motives behind the resurrection behind this documentary. Three decades after it won best Documentary Hearts and Minds serves not just as an outstanding example of the documentary's art but as a startling accurate, if inadvertent, prophecy of Americas Iraq misadventure.
The strength of Davis' subtle narrative- there is no voice over, and no presenter (a certain loud overweight American could possibly learn something from this technique) - derives from his understanding what a shambles the Vietnam War was. For this reason Davies avoids largely avoids anti-war voices, and instead interviews those who are for the war, banking that the foolishness of their views will undermine their own cause better than any peacenik could. Particularly visible is the late General William Westmoreland - probably the biggest idiot ever to have worn stars on his shoulders. Most damning of all are Davis' interviews with veterans. Asked if America has learnt anything from Vietnam bomber pilot Randy Floyd replies: "I think we're trying not to."
Robert Kennedy features in this documentary, and in a speech given by him shortly before his assassination he confessed that he (and JFK) got it wrong a few years before under JFK Administration on Vietnam.
At last somebody had the guts to come clean about the sainted JFK's mistake on Vietnam. Sadly as Robert Kennedy was assassinated shortly after, we'll never know if he would have become President and reversed the process his brother helped start.
American Joint Chiefs of Staff started Vietnam conflict with the help of the French; three weeks before his assasination JFK put in an order to bring 26,000 troops home from Vietnam by Christmas. He expected a complete pull out within a year. Less than a week after his murder LBJ signed an order to send more troops to Vietnam!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A first-hand mosaic of the Vietnam war
Comment: This is an excellent documentary and I did not find it unduly harrowing, as is perhaps suggested by other reviewers. There is no narrative, instead news clips and interviews are pieced together to allow the content to speak for itself. Interviewees include soldiers and civilians from all sides, including Walt Rostow and William Westmoreland. The latter appears in the film to be startlingly unsophisticated and his views on the `Asian lack of appreciation for the value human life' are chillingly juxtaposed with footage of grieving families of South Vietnamese military casualties.
I've read a lot about Vietnam, but nothing that I have read has been as effective as watching `Hearts and Minds' in providing me with an appreciation of the human dimension to the conflict.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Powerful and harrowing but worthwhile
Comment: An exceptionally good documentary. I love documentaries and rented this because it got good reviews and I didn't know a huge amount about the Vietnam war. I wasn't disappointed. There is no real narrative and no commentary, but this documentary conveys the horrors of the Vietnam war expertly.
This film uses war footage, interviews with soldiers, politicians, parents, victims, and is expertly edited in a way that the horror of the Vietnam war, is felt with a tangible force.
It's interesting, and heartbreaking to watch in the context of current events. American presidents lied to their citizens, waged war on false pretexts, started wars they didn't know how to finish and served untold horrors onto innocent people 30 years ago, and yet current administrations don't seem to have learnt a hell of a lot. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they recycled some of the speeches from back then - some of them sound depressingly familiar!
It's a painful film to watch but its a worthwhile exercise. I can't say I 'enjoyed' it, but I was never bored. It's too easy to forget the human tragedy that accompanies the decisions to go to war, and it's the kind of film that people should watch lest they forget just how raw and destructive war is.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A brilliant and disturbing film !
Comment: This is the best documentary I have ever seen, made before the final humiliating pull-out in 1975. Great detail has been given in an earlier review so I won't attempt the same, but if you want to see the full horror of Vietnam, not in a commentary but in words of people involved,and the images of war and brutality, then buy this DVD. The lunacy of American policy becomes plain in the words of the policy makers themselves, as is their almost total ignorance of the Vietnamese people and their insensitivity to human suffering. Sadly, you also realise that they seem to have learned nothing from the war because in Iraq and in foreign policy generally they show the same attitudes and ignorance. Buy it - you won't be disappointed.
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![Hearts And Minds [1975]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JQEC0YQKL._SL160_.jpg)
