Highly Overrated But Still Good

Boring

A Masterpiece!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam is exactly what the title suggests. Even though the documentary sounds like it could get very tiresome very fast, Couturie has enough skill and passion for the subject to keep the audience interested in what these soldiers are writing back home to loved ones.I don't think a film like this can happen today because the media controls what we, the viewer, see and hear. Back then it was all broad casted for everyone to see. This is why the film works as well as it does, it doesn't try to hide anything, it shows us who these young soldiers are and what they feel about the war.For so long we politicians and citizens argue over the war and if they support it or not, this is the first time we hear it from the soldiers themselves. The sound track is powerful enough to set you back into the time era. We are listening to what these soldiers listened to; these songs were their way of getting out of the war and being back home with their family.Dear America shows us skillful editing and careful attention to detail, not only are all the song choices good, but they serve the scene well. With the skillful editing and song choice the viewer is thrown into this war themselves and they connect with each soldier there.The one complain I have would be having Hollywood actors read the letters. It took me out of the experience because I would recognize some of the voices, then I would realize that it's not this soldier reading it to his family, it's Robert De Niro or William Dafoe.This film is touching and real. You can see the passion are care that was put into making this film and you will leave with respect for the young people who lost their lives in the time of war.

This piece was comprised completely of real film captured during Vietnam, which is really so hard for a person like myself to grasp. I wasn't alive for the war, and the only reference point I have ever had, was films like Apocalypse Now. To see these images, and to be told that they were in fact real, and not pre-planned and scripted was really shocking. The images ranged from uplifting shots of soldiers bonding together as Americans united against a cause, and devastating shots of bodies being carried away. The music was unfortunately very clichéd, and was not appropriate for the tone and mood of the piece. I think the narration from actors both worked for and against the final product. At times I could recognize the voice, and it would make me think of the person reading the letter instead of the letter itself. The most moving performance to me was that of Ellen Burstyn, who read the letter of the mother at the end. It was very moving, and appropriately emotional.

My Dad I and watched this film when it first came out on HBO, I have always been interested in watching documentary's about Vietnam war because my father was there. This movie touched my heart in so many ways because it gave me an insight to what my father went through but, halfway through the movie their was a picture of my father with his other buddies, he was so jazzed to see himself in this movie and I was excited that he was in the movie. To this day Letters home from Vietnam is the best documentary ever made. thank you for letting us see a portion of what the men and women went through and the men and women who gave their lives so I could be free today.

Nothing can capture the hopes and fears of the brave soldiers who fought and died for freedom like their own words. Take that and add the documentary films and photos taken in Vietnam and you have a reality that no fictional movie can capture but that hundreds of thousands went through every day, doing what they do best in a place they'd rather not be. The actors reading the letters manages to capture the sincerity and the emotions of the people writing them.Highly recommended.