Our list includes both features and documentaries that approach the conflict from a variety of angles.

The 20 best Vietnam War movies of all time, ranked

Our list includes both features and documentaries that approach the conflict from a variety of angles.

By Jordan Hoffman

Jordan Hoffman

Jordan Hoffman is a writer at **, mostly covering nostalgia. He has been writing about entertainment since 2007.

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April 23, 2026 5:00 p.m. ET

'Da 5 Bloods,' 'The Deer Hunter,' 'Apocalypse Now'. Credit:

DAVID LEE/NETFLIX; Courtesy Everett Collection (2)

There’s not much one can say that's positive about the Vietnam war, outside of its impact on culture. There were the rock concerts, the fashion trends and, in time, movies made in response to that terrible chapter in world history.

This list of 20 films tries to get at the conflict from all points of view, and from different genres. Taking them all in at once can be a little depressing, but considering how world leaders are still out there sending soldiers to die to advance their political aims, it’s clear we can all still use a few lessons from history.

Perhaps there are some titles listed here that are new to you, and watching them might lead to a wider understanding. These are our picks for the 20 best Vietnam movies.

We Were Soldiers (2002)

Mel Gibson and Sam Elliott in 'We Were Soldiers'.

Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection

This list ignores macho, revisionist action pictures like Chuck Norris’s *Missing in Action *and Sylvester Stallone’s *Rambo: First Blood Part II* that featured American badasses returning to Vietnam to explode their way to glory. The ultraviolent *We Were Soldiers*, starring Mel Gibson before he directed his gore-soaked *The Passion of the Christ *(2004) and *Apocalypto* (2006), gets a pass, as its source material is a well-regarded memoir concerning the Battle of Ia Drang, the first major engagement between U.S. forces and the North Vietnamese.

*Braveheart *screenwriter Randall Wallace wrote and directed the film, and the supporting cast includes Barry Pepper, Greg Kinnear, Sam Elliott, and a lot of screaming fighters on both sides whose bodies are torn apart in a series of gruesome ways.

Where to stream *We Were Soldiers*: MGM+

Birdy (1984)

Nicolas Cage in 'Birdy'. Everett Collection

Childhood friends played by Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine try to help one another heal after a devastating tour in Vietnam.

Cage’s damage is physical; he appears with a bandaged face. Modine, always a peculiar, ornithologically obsessed kid, is confined to a mental hospital, non-verbal, and behaving like one of the birds he’s studied his whole life. Director Alan Parker weaves flashbacks into the narrative and deploys a moody, blue sheen to the hospital scenes against the more terrifying combat sequences.

This was the first film featuring an original score by art-rock sensation Peter Gabriel, and many of the cues were later developed for future album releases.

Where to stream *Birdy*: Amazon Prime Video (to rent)

The Hanoi Hilton (1987)

John Diehl, Rick Fitts, Michael Moriarty, and Doug Savant in 'The Hanoi Hilton'.

Cannon Films/courtesy Everett Collection

Though it came and went during its initial release, *The Hanoi Hilton*, which dramatizes life at a notorious Vietnamese prisoner of war detainment center, became a substantial hit on home video and cable television, particularly among veterans.

Michael Moriarty does his best to keep his men safe and stable during their imprisonment, despite occasional torture sessions and a cold shoulder from a visiting American peace activist (not so loosely based on Jane Fonda).

Major news events from the war make their way to the men as they spend eight years in confinement, offering a unique perspective on history. Though he is not mentioned, this was indeed the same prison where John McCain spent over five years.

Where to stream *The Hanoi Hilton*: Amazon Prime Video

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Letter to Jane (1972)

Jane Fonda in 1972, featured in 'Letter to Jane'.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Speaking of Jane Fonda, this experimental, non-narrative essay film from Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin examines (and examines and examines) one of the famous news photos of Fonda when she visited the North Vietnamese army.

*Letter to Jane *is less about her, or even the war, than it is about the manipulation of images, and the hazy, hyper-intellectual ways these interpretations can be maneuvered for political ends.

The ceaseless voiceover pontifications toggle between brilliant insights and the blatherings one gets from a chatterbox drunk at a bar, and is thus a wonderful encapsulation of what it’s like to hang around with activists.

Where to stream *Letter to Jane*: The Criterion Channel

Heaven & Earth (1993)

Hiep Thi Le and Tommy Lee Jones in 'Heaven & Earth'.

Courtesy Everett Collection

By 1993, Oliver Stone had cornered the market on ’60s stories: *JFK*, *The Doors*, *Platoon* (which is on this list), and *Born on the 4th of July* (which is not).

*Heaven & Earth *is a rare Hollywood production from a Vietnamese civilian’s perspective, starring Hiep Thi Le as Le Ly, whose life in a peaceful village is destroyed in an instant by bombs.

She’s assaulted by Northern and Southern Vietnamese forces, both of whom accuse her of being a spy. In time, she meets a kind (at first) American soldier (Tommy Lee Jones) and ends up living in California. It’s just an ocean away from home, but may as well be a galaxy.

Le Ly, still with us in her mid-70s, is a successful author, entrepreneur, and humanitarian.

Where to stream *Heaven & Earth*: Amazon Prime Video (to rent)

The Little Girl of Hanoi (1974)

A B-52 Stratofortress during Operation Linebacker II, the backdrop of 'The Little Girl of Hanoi'.

Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty

Some critics accused movies like *The Hanoi Hilton *and *We Were Soldiers *of being American propaganda, so it’s important to get the other side on this list, too. *The Little Girl of Hanoi* (also known as *Girl From Hanoi*) is a spare and simple Vietnamese production, following a young girl travelling the war-torn countryside in search of her family after an aerial assault.

The lo-fi film was a hit in the Soviet Union, but wasn’t readily available in the United States for decades. It has been recently rediscovered in the West, showing at New York’s Film Forum and streaming on Criterion Channel, with critics citing its documentary-like feel on locations that had recently been carpet-bombed by American forces.

Where to stream *The Little Girl of Hanoi*: The Criterion Channel

Dead Presidents (1995)

Freddy Rodriguez in 'Dead Presidents'.

Buena Vista / Courtesy Everett Collection

The Hughes brothers’ follow-up to their successful indie *Menace II Society *(1993), *Dead Presidents *was among the first projects to examine the Black experience in Vietnam. (Black soldiers and casualties were disproportionately higher than their demographic percentages in the U.S. at the time.)

Larenz Tate stars as a middle-class soldier who returns from the war and finds it increasingly difficult to adapt to civilian life. He witnesses his comrades get sick from Agent Orange or succumb to heroin addiction, before falling in with a militant Black power group and a life of crime.

While there are occasional adventure elements, this is a bleak picture that offers a backstory to wayward Vietnam vets often overlooked by society at the time.

Where to stream *Dead Presidents*: Amazon Prime Video (to rent)

Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi (1983)

Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill in the jungles of... well, not technically Vietnam, but still. Lucasfilm Ltd.

This may seem like an entry from a different list, but George Lucas has spoken several times about how his *Star Wars *trilogy was written as a response to the American engagement in Vietnam. What’s more, he’s made it pretty clear who he considered to be the bad guys.

*Return of the Jedi* is the one that resonates most, with a look at asymmetric jungle warfare on the forest moon of Endor against the Galactic Empire. Yes, comparing the Ewoks — essentially teddy bears holding sticks and stones — to the Viet Cong may seem a little flip, but we’re just following the bread crumbs here. It certainly casts those trips to Toys “R” Us in the 1980s in a new light.

Where to stream *Return of the Jedi*: Disney+

Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, and Clarke Peters in 'Da 5 Bloods'. DAVID LEE/NETFLIX

Spike Lee’s revelatory *Da 5 Bloods *is a caper film that jumps between zippy humor, shocking war footage, and rich drama. A group of Vietnam vets return in search of a cache of gold bars they buried decades ago. At first their visit is all smiles at nightclubs, but it quickly goes sideways in the mine-heavy jungle.

The film’s heart and anguished soul is Delroy Lindo, tormented by guilt, PTSD, and a difficult relationship with his son, played by Jonathan Majors.

Filling out the group are Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Norm Lewis, while flashback sequences feature Chadwick Boseman as their charismatic fallen leader.

Where to stream *Da 5 Bloods*: Netflix

Casualties of War (1989)

Don Harvey, Michael J. Fox, and Sean Penn in 'Casualties of War'.

Sunset Boulevard/Getty

Brian De Palma, hot off *The Untouchables*, cashed his blank check to make this brutal Vietnam drama about a true incident in which American G.I.s kidnapped, raped, and eventually killed a civilian while out on patrol. (Several of De Palma’s earlier films — e.g. *Hi, Mom! *— were made in vehement protest of the war, so this was clearly getting something off his chest.)

Sean Penn is the repulsive lead villain. Michael J. Fox was somewhat controversial casting as the one soldier with a conscience. Some felt he was punching against his weight, while others felt seeing a mainstream good guy from hits like *Back to the Future *and *Family Ties* added an uneasy edginess to the dark subject matter.

Where to stream *Casualties of War*: Tubi

The Vietnam War (2017)

The PBS documentary 'The Vietnam War' explored the conflict over 17 engrossing hours.

Wait, so if Vietnam was originally a French colony, how the heck did America get involved? There’s no shame in admitting you weren’t paying attention in school, but would now like to learn. Enter Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and their 17-plus hour (read: thorough) examination of the Vietnam war, from its origins in the mid-1800s to today.

The trademark “deliberate pace” of a Burns documentary allows time to explore all contours to the story as objectively as possible, and to introduce viewers to living witnesses of these troubling events.

The stories are harrowing, but one comes away from the project with a rich understanding of how everything got so out of hand. History does, unfortunately, repeat itself, making this essential viewing.

Where to stream *The Vietnam War*: PBS

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Robert De Niro in 'The Deer Hunter'. Everett Collection

Robert De Niro, John Cazale, John Savage, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken lead the cast of *The Deer Hunter*, released just three years after the war’s official conclusion. A gut-wrenching drama about how no one comes back from battle unchanged, it took home the Oscar for Best Picture.

The film was immediately controversial, depicting Viet Cong as sadistic torturers who forced prisoners to play Russian roulette — a fictional conceit. Nevertheless, the deadly game becomes a grand metaphor for the entire picture, leading to an explosive conclusion.

Where to stream *The Deer Hunter*: Amazon Prime Video (to rent)

Rescue Dawn (2006)

Steve Zahn and Christian Bale in 'Rescue Dawn'.

Maverick German director Werner Herzog made the documentary *Little Dieter Needs To Fly *in 1997. Less than a decade later, he revisited the story of escaped prisoner of war Dieter Dengler as a narrative feature, *Rescue Dawn*.

Christian Bale is the shot-down German-American pilot who refuses to renounce the U.S. for propaganda purposes. The scenes in the prison camp are brutal, but so are Dengler’s obstacles alone in the jungle.

What sets the film apart from other survivalist tales is the strangeness of its specificity. For example, watching Bale sob as he clutches a Butterfinger bar makes for a curious image — but it’s what actually happened!

Where to stream *Rescue Dawn*: Tubi

First Blood (1982)

Sylvster Stallone in 'First Blood'.

Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty

We said there was no *Rambo* on this list, but that doesn’t include *First Blood*, the first of Sly Stallone’s action series that is, by contrast to the later work, a surprisingly cerebral film.

John Rambo is a Vietnam vet who just wants to be a drifter suffering from PTSD in peace, but local law enforcement doesn’t want him hanging around their small town. (One can interpret this as post-Vietnam America not wanting to deal with the aftereffects of the war, and what it did to a generation of soldiers.)

Things soon escalate. After the cops “draw first blood,” Rambo defaults to battle-tested killing-machine mode, defending his liberty. If there were no preposterous sequels, this would be better remembered as a gritty classic.

Where to stream *First Blood*: AMC+

Platoon (1986)

Charlie Sheen in 'Platoon'.

Oliver Stone’s *Platoon*, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and was a massive box office success, opened the door for a new conversation about Vietnam both at the cinema and in wider culture in 1986. Charlie Sheen starred as Stone’s stand-in, and many of the situations in the film were taken directly from his own experiences.

Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe costar as senior officers with opposing attitudes in war and life, and the supporting cast is a who’s-who of 1980s faces, including Forest Whitaker, Johnny Depp, Kevin Dillon, and others. The movie paints its moral paradoxes in broad strokes, and successfully evokes the chaos, terror and absurdity of combat.

Where to stream *Platoon*: Tubi

Hearts and Minds (1974)

Father and child during the 1968 Tet offensive in 'Hearts and Minds'.

Courtesy Everett Collection

Though Vietnam is often referred to as the first “television war,” it was this concise feature-length documentary that quickly became a primary argument showing how unwinnable (and unjust) America’s engagement had become. There are devastating sequences with infantrymen suffering as drug addicts, quotes from uncaring generals, and almost unwatchable moments of grieving Vietnamese civilians.

Unlike Ken Burns’ film decades later, this is not an even-handed study. Director Peter Davis used every filmmaking tool with the intention of doing what he could to stop the war. It remains an important warning.

Where to stream *Hearts and Minds*: HBO Max

Indochine (1992)

Linh Pan Pham and Catherine Deneuve in 'Indochine'.

Moviestore/Shutterstock

The Vietnam war is not just about America’s so-called “police action,” but about the end of French imperialism. This Catherine Deneuve-led drama is set in the 1930s, decades before the grunts of *Platoon *were deployed to the jungles, but sets up the dominoes that would later fall.

With a lush, Merchant-Ivory style sheen, *Indochine *presents a French plantation owner and her adopted Vietnamese daughter who are eventually dragged into conflict by the shifting political tides of anti-colonialism, communism, and the forward momentum of time.

More so than any other film on this list, *Indochine*, shot on location in Vietnam and Malaysia, exploits the natural beauty of the region, all the more devastating when one considers how troubled the area would be for decades to come.

Where to stream *Indochine*: Amazon Prime Video (to rent)

Regret to Inform (1999)

'Regret to Inform' takes a unique approach to Vietnam, focusing on the war widows.

The Criterion Collection

The phrase “regret to inform,” often included in messages to families of dead soldiers, takes on double meaning here as a war widow, decades after her husband’s death, goes to Vietnam to learn more about his experiences.

First-person documentarian Barbara Sonneborn teams up with a Vietnamese translator, Xuan Ngoc Nguyen, herself a war widow with her own stories to tell. They criss-cross the country, speaking to those who lost loved ones fighting for the North and the South. (Years later, the distinctions feel less important.)

There are also American widows of soldiers who died after the war, either from Agent Orange or suicide. Obviously, this isn’t a very upbeat film, but the humanism and care shared among those in mourning is, in its way, healing.

Where to stream *Regret to Inform*: The Criterion Channel

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Martin Sheen in 'Apocalypse Now'.

Zoetrope Studios/United Artist/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty

When Francis Ford Coppola presented *Apocalypse Now *at Cannes, he famously said his movie “isn’t *about *Vietnam — it *is *Vietnam.”

Considering his difficulties making the film (the lead actor nearly dying, the sets getting destroyed by weather, Marlon Brando being weird), one can understand the hyperbole. But *Apocalypse Now*, like few others in movie history, maintains a “bigger than just a project” aura.

While its basic structure, adapted from Joseph Conrad’s *Heart of Darkness*, may seem like a straightforward adventure tale, the journey up the river spirals into surrealism and, eventually, a kind of pure cinema.

“Do you know who’s in command here?” Martin Sheen’s visiting Captain Willard asks a grunt during a particularly chaotic battle sequence.

Slowly, the reply comes: “Yeah.”

Where to stream *Apocalypse Now*: PLEX

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Matthew Modine in 'Full Metal Jacket'.

Warner Bros/ Everett

Can a vicious inquiry into the brutality of Vietnam also be… a little bit funny? Stanley Kubrick seemed to think so, especially in the first half of *Full Metal Jacket*, during which a collection of fresh Marine recruits undergo the dehumanizing process of basic training.

R. Lee Ermey, a drill instructor first hired by the production as a technical advisor, was so impressive that he ended up becoming the quintessential barracks blowhard, stealing one devastating scene of psychological destruction after another.

The movie then changes to urban combat, albeit not the typical jungle warfare usually seen in Vietnam movies. Though this is more a collection of scenes than a typical story, its crystalline approach to war’s brutality makes it one of the most striking films ever made.

Where to stream *Full Metal Jacket*: Amazon Prime Video (to rent)

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