Wonderful character development!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

In 1973, a peace agreement is signed in Paris to end the Vietnam war. In Aug. 1974, President Richard Nixon resigns. A few months later, the North launches a full scale invasion of the South. Americans are war wearied and help is not coming. The American ambassador refuses to accept defeatist talk. Some in the embassy organize a black ops smuggling out vulnerable Vietnamese. As the NVA closes in on Saigon, the Americans set off the secret evacuation plans with Bing Crosby's White Christmas.The iconic imagines from the evacuation are the helicopters taking off from the rooftop and the helicopters being pushed overboard. For most people, these are the collective memories. This documentary dives deeper into the story. Some of it is fascinating behind the scenes stuff. The last half is a bit repetitive as various harrowing stories do resemble each other.

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.

Some reviewers here have missed the point: in no way, shape, or form does Last Days in Vietnam purport to be a documentary covering the whole of the Vietnam War and the rights and wrongs behind it. That documentary would take hours to chronicle such events. Instead, this is a snapshot of a single situation, the airlifting to safety of many South Vietnamese people in the dying days of Saigon.Where Last Days in Vietnam excels is in the contemporary footage of the event. The entire film is made up of old news footage of crowds fleeing and the unfolding situation at the US embassy in Saigon. Talking head footage is cut in to humanise the story, and the documentary as a whole turns out to be thoroughly engrossing: it's gripping stuff, moving with it, in which the best and worst of human nature is brought to life.Every talking head character here has an interesting story to tell. The director, Rory Kennedy, is the daughter of none other than Robert Kennedy and although I wasn't familiar with her work previously I'll be looking out for her in future. Last Days in Vietnam is superlative stuff, and unmissable viewing for anyone with an interest in those ill-remembered times.

This documentary was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature, losing to Citizenfour. There will be spoilers ahead:Using a combination of archival footage, news reports, still photos and interviews with participants in the events, including then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and then-Special Forces Richard Armitage, this documentary offers an in-depth chronicle of the evacuation of US personnel, US civilians and South Vietnamese ahead of the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese in April of 1975.The documentary starts with the ceasefire and withdrawal of combat forces by the US in 1973, with the expectation of a lasting peaceful, if uneasy, co-existence between North and South Vietnam. With the resignation of Richard Nixon in August of 1974, North Vietnam begins to become more belligerent towards South Vietnam, finally invading in late 1974/early 1975.Then-President Ford's attempts to secure additional aid for South Vietnam failed, but they would only have delayed the inevitable collapse. By April of 1975, it was obvious to most that the end was near.The bulk of this documentary chronicles the efforts to evacuate as many Vietnamese, along with US personnel, before the fall of South Vietnam completely to the advancing North Vietnamese army. It covers the efforts of many US diplomats, operatives and military to help those they worked with or, in many cases, wives, girlfriends and children, to flee the country for safety. Thousands of Vietnamese were evacuated in various ways. Some got out on the last airplanes to leave, but the documentary covers mainly those leaving by ship and by helicopter. It details official evacuations and just plain desperate efforts by Vietnamese pilots to get their families out.The archival footage and news reports are fascinating, but the heart of this documentary is in the interviews with people involved in the last days in Vietnam-from CIA operatives and embassy staff and Marines guarding the embassy to naval officers on ships receiving evacuees and escaped Vietnamese and a few who hoped to be rescued but for various reasons weren't. Often, their words are accompanied by footage, still photos or models of the US embassy compounds, which makes their comments all the more moving.Even though it becomes clear that mistakes were made in deciding when to evacuate and that there was a kind of "tunnel vision" in place which likely made things more desperate and chaotic than it needed to be, everyone in here is treated quite fairly and no one is scapegoated, which would have been very easy to do in one or two cases. Under the circumstances, things actually went reasonably well. Could things have been handled more expeditiously? Certainly, but that's 20/20 hindsight at this point.This is available on DVD, Blu-Ray and for download and is well worth getting/watching. Most recommended.