All war is hell, but Vietnam was a specific kind of nightmare for America. Fought for spurious reasons and ending with little to show for all the bloodshed, it left a generation scarred and began the United States’ long decline as the world’s hero. Coinciding with an era in Hollywood where filmmakers were already growing more cynical and suspicious toward the government at large, the movies about the conflict naturally feature much less rah-rah patriotism than those set during World War II . In fact, many of them are basically horror films.

How many, though, are historically accurate? With 2025 marking the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and thus the end of the war, we asked military historian , author of acclaimed account , to rank the most well-known Vietnam War movies

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