Last Days in Vietnam

2014 "How Many Could Be Saved?"
7.6| 1h38m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 05 September 2014 Released
Producted By: Moxie Firecracker Films
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

During the chaotic final weeks of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army closes in on Saigon as the panicked South Vietnamese people desperately attempt to escape. On the ground, American soldiers and diplomats confront a moral quandary: whether to obey White House orders to evacuate only U.S. citizens.

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Reviews

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks
Btexxamar I like Black Panther, but I didn't like this movie.
Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
phd_travel It's quite amazing how much was captured on film and photographs and it's put together so well that it almost seems like one was watching a movie of the fall of Saigon - it feels so complete. There are interesting interviews with witnesses mainly military personnel both US and South Vietnamese.Unlike a typical Vietnam war movie this covers a different angle - not about fighting the war but the end of the war. There is criticism of Ambassador Graham Martin's refusal to organize an evacuation till it was too late leading the the chaos that took place. Would have liked to know more of his reasons for being so obstinate and the diplomatic failure at the end.One minor fault is subtitles are in white sometimes against a white background and so hard to make out.This makes one want a follow up on what happened to those left behind beyond the words of epilogue at the end.
Robert J. Maxwell A pretty good description of the fall and evacuation of South Vietnam in 1975, including newsreel footage, maps, observations of witnesses, and interpretation by expert talking heads. It's balanced and objective but it pulls no punches.All this happened forty years ago and now students read about this momentous war in history books, I guess, so maybe a brief context should be offered.Vietnam was divided into the communist north and the corrupt south. The south also had guerrilla fighters who were disrupting everyday life and committing foul deeds. They were aided by the regular army of North Vietnam.In the mid 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided it was time to put an end to the communist aggression and began to send troops and other facilities to South Vietnam, almost half a million men. It didn't work out and a peace treaty was finally signed in 1973. The peace was to be managed by the South Vietnamese government with American assistance in case of a resumption of aggression by the north.That treaty, guaranteeing the south's independence, was signed by President Richard Nixon, whom the north feared. As soon as he was out of office, the north attacked South Vietnam again. The American public, fed up with ten years of a brutal war and the loss of 58,000 dead and 130,000 maimed, were not about to interfere.The South was unable to properly defend itself despite American equipment. Leadership in the dictatorial South Vietnamese government and military was poor and riddled with communist spies and sympathizers. Eventually the drive by the army of North Vietnam reached the southern capital of Saigon and the remaining American staff, as well as every Vietnamese family who had been associated with them, scrambled frantically to escape in every way possible. The North Vietnamese were fond of mass executions.Whatever "order" there was in the escape was due to plans organized and executed without the ambassador's knowledge, by his own staff and by State Department personnel. The ambassador continued to insist that talk of evacuation was defeatist. When an unauthorized flight of South Vietnamese military men and their families reached the Philippines, the man responsible was fired.That "evacuation" is the subject of this documentary. Much of the responsibility is pinned directly on the ambassador, Graham Martin, who had formulated no plans for an escape because he believed the army of the north would never reach Saigon. And it was a most humiliating mêlée, with terrified people, men, women, and babies, hanging on to departing airliners during take off runs and falling to the tarmac.A task force of some fifty ships stood offshore from Saigon. Only Americans were to be evacuated, but each helicopter was mobbed by desperate and loyal South Vietnamese civilians. Not just high ranking Vietnamese military but the wives and families of Americans, their tailors and cooks. Helicopters with hangers on dangling from their skids left from the roof of the American embassy and other locations. So many helicopters landed on the decks of one ship that, in order to make room for the next arrivals, the first arrivals were pushed overboard.The media photos and the videos shown at the time give an impression of near chaos and the impression seems to have been accurate enough. The evacuation was a pitiless process. But then the whole war -- which had lasted thirty years for the Vietnamese -- seems mindless in retrospect.
851222 Greetings from Lithuania."Last Days in Vietnam" (2014) is a great documentary on all accounts. It is superbly informative, highly consistent and very involving made. I actually never thought or have heard about this period of war, and it was very interesting to see it. This documentary in my opinion is better made that "Citizenfour" which i also enjoyed very much, and maybe "Last Days in Vietnam" isn't that topical for these days, it is better crafted documentary - you can clearly see that huge amount of time and effort was putted in to put all this in one movie.Overall, "Last Days in Vietnam" is simply a great documentary movie. At running time almost 2 h it is highly involving and doesn't drag for a second. It is very informative and opens up a short and rather unseen period of one of the bloodiest and famous wars in mankind history.
accountingman I was in college when the events of this documentary took place, and only remembered that there was a sort of scramble to do the final evacuations (memories mostly coming from the iconic photo on the roof, along with photos of people swarming the US Embassy). This film tells the whole story, and I sat in the interview really amazed at the way the story was told. It brought tears to my eyes in several parts. It is a reminder also of how the military of the USA was at a very low point in public opinion due to the Vietnam war, and the general feeling of the American public was that we were "done" over there and no more money ought to be spent on any sort of military activity. For that reason this film is a very important piece of military and political history. Very highly recommended.