The 15 Best Vietnam War Movies

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, which means a time for reflection and remembrance around the world. In the five decades since the war ended (and the six since it began in earnest), one of the ways we’ve chosen to remember the divisive and tragic conflict is through feature films. Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through to present day, some of our finest filmmakers—including one who was a Vietnam veteran himself—have dramatized the war in a number of ways, from epic battles to deeply human portraits of violence and even the occasional comedy. Let’s take a look at 15 of the greatest Vietnam War movies ever made, arranged in chronological order. 

1. The Deer Hunter (1978)
2. Go Tell the Spartans (1978)
3. Apocalypse Now (1979)
4. First Blood (1982)
5. Platoon (1986)
6. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
7. Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
8. Hamburger Hill (1987)
9. 84C MoPic (1989)
10. Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
11. Casualties of War (1989)
12. We Were Soldiers (2002)
13. Rescue Dawn (2006)
14. Tropic Thunder (2008)
15. Da 5 Bloods (2020)

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter earned several Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken) after its 1978 release, cementing its place in movie history. These days, it’s perhaps best known in cinephile shorthand for the scenes of Russian roulette that punctuate key emotional moments in this story of three steelworkers-turned-soldiers (Walken, John Savage, and Robert De Niro, who prepped for the film by using his agent’s name to embed in steel working communities) who struggle to find meaning and purpose in their lives after the war. It’s a flashy thing that makes it easy to remember the film, but the more you think about The Deer Hunter, the more that Russian roulette motif becomes less of a showpiece and more of a hardened, icy metaphor for what Vietnam did to the American spirit. 

Go Tell the Spartans (1978)

While many Vietnam films take American soldiers into the thickest and most relentless fighting, Go Tell the Spartans is notable for its efforts to chronicle the earlier days of U.S. involvement in the conflict. Set in 1964, before the American presence in the region began to truly surge, it follows a group of Army advisors who are tasked with taking what’s meant to be a largely abandoned village. What they ultimately encounter is a hellscape for which they’re unprepared, underlining the ultimate futility of the American presence in Vietnam. Though it was eclipsed at the time by films like The Deer Hunter, Go Tell the Spartans is now revered as an antiwar classic, and a powerful latter-day role for the great Burt Lancaster.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Though The Godfather will forever be Francis Ford Coppola’s most prominent cinematic legacy, Apocalypse Now has spent nearly 50 years growing its own place in movie history, and the spell it casts is so potent and all-consuming that it’s now considered one of the great American movies. Loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, the film follows an Army captain (Martin Sheen) as he journeys deep into the jungle to kill a rogue colonel (Marlon Brando), along the way encountering atrocity, revelation, terror, and the sheer physical force of nature. Intense, poetic, and deeply layered, it’s earned every bit of its still-swelling reputation.

First Blood (1982)

First Blood is not a film set during the Vietnam War, or even a film that takes place in Vietnam. Instead, it’s a showcase of the longer war, the battle for American sanity and peace in the years following the conflict, as soldiers returned home without direction or even simple acceptance. In one of his finest screen performances, Sylvester Stallone shines as John Rambo, a Vietnam veteran who turns his rage and confusion on an unsuspecting police force when they try to drive him from their town. (David Morrell, who wrote the novel the movie is adapted from, based the character on a real WWII war hero.) The result is a much more intense, emotionally focused film than any of the Rambo sequels ever managed.

Platoon (1986)

Arguably the Vietnam film against which all others are measured, Best Picture winner Platoon thrives on the primal energy of its leads and the true-life stories of writer/director Oliver Stone, who crafted the film based on his own experiences as a soldier in the war—making it the first major American film to be helmed by a Vietnam veteran. The tense dramatized standoffs between Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe as two warring officers in the title platoon are the stuff of legend, and its chronicle of the psychic damage of the war on a whole generation of young men still hits you in the heart.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Stanley Kubrick made several war movies in his career, and while Fear and Desire is a look at his early potential and both Paths of Glory and Spartacus showcase his knack for spectacle, it’s Full Metal Jacket that’s been the loudest part of the cultural conversation. The film is best remembered for its basic training scenes led by a fearless R. Lee Ermey (a real-life Marine drill sergeant-turned-actor who initially served as the film’s technical advisor), but its real trick is transitioning from that crucible into another one, as the surviving Marine recruits are launched into a Vietnam of sex and senseless violence—and forever changed as a result. 

Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)

One of a string of performances that earned Robin Williams wider recognition as a dramatic actor as well as comedic force, Good Morning, Vietnam tells the story of an irreverent Armed Forces Radio DJ who arrives in Vietnam, shakes up the airwaves, then comes face-to-face with the atrocities of the war and the ways in which American bureaucracy seeks to keep those atrocities from the public. Williams won a well-deserved Golden Globe and scored a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance, which features intense dramatic sequences as well as improvised laugh riots in the radio booth, and the film today stands as a masterclass in balancing comedy and tragedy. The real-life Adrian Cronauer, whom Williams portrayed in the film, liked the movie just fine, even if he wasn’t thrilled with his characterization: “It was intended as a piece of entertainment, and [Williams] was playing a character named Adrian Cronauer who shared a lot of my experiences,” Cronauer said. “But actually, he was playing Robin Williams. That’s what he always does. He was nominated for an Academy Award; I can’t argue with that.” 

Hamburger Hill (1987)

Released the year after Platoon amid a wave of Vietnam films, Hamburger Hill, like Oliver Stone’s classic, follows a single platoon of soldiers in the midst of the war. Unlike Platoon, which was a clear look back at the impact of the war on America, John Irvin’s film focuses instead on the here and now for its characters, drawing few conclusions as it puts them through the hellish 1969 battle named in the title. For some viewers, that might be a weakness—but there’s no denying the visceral power of the battle at its core, or the draw of its cast, which includes Don Cheadle, Steven Weber, Courtney B. Vance, and Dylan McDermott in his very first movie.

84C MoPic (1989)

Another film from the post-Platoon wave of Vietnam movies is Patrick Sheane Duncan’s 84C MoPic, which immediately set itself apart from the pack with its clever formatting: The film is presented as found footage gathered by a cameraman on a reconnaissance mission in North Vietnamese territory. The point-of-view camerawork chronicles the recon patrol’s mundane movements and deadly engagements with the enemy, giving 84C MoPic a visceral intensity. It's a Vietnam epic with an independent spirit—and an under-the-radar gem well worth seeking out. 

Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Oliver Stone directed three films about the Vietnam War in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and he won the Oscar for Best Director for the first two of them. Like Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July follows a young American—in this case, U.S. Marine Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise)—as he faces atrocities and moral quandaries in Vietnam. But while Platoon keeps to the war itself, Born goes further. The real-life Ron Kovic’s shift from fighter to activist is chronicled through Cruise’s searing performance, which cements the film as one of Stone’s best—and an essential piece of art about the long shadows of the conflict. 

Casualties of War (1989)

Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War is based on the real-life “Incident on Hill 192,” in which American soldiers kidnapped and raped a Vietnamese girl, the film stars Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn as two men on opposites of an atrocity. It’s not a subtle film, but what makes it so successful is how well it maintains a sense of drama and tension even as it hurtles towards an inevitable conclusion.

We Were Soldiers (2002)

We Were Soldiers—based on Hal Moore’s memoir of his Vietnam experiences—reteams star Mel Gibson with Braveheart writer Randall Wallace for one of the most effective 21st century takes on the war. The story of Moore’s first major action in Vietnam, the Battle of Ia Drang, it’s a chronicle of American soldiers overcoming near-impossible odds to achieve a victory, which then shifts how the Viet Cong approach fighting Americans and, ultimately, transforms the war into something bloodier and more personal. It’s a well-made chronicle of a crucial piece of Vietnam War history. 

Rescue Dawn (2006)

In 1997, prolific German auteur Werner Herzog released a documentary called Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Almost a decade later, he followed up the nonfiction tale of U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler with a fictionalized recounting of the same events. Rescue Dawn stars Christian Bale as Dengler and chronicles the pilot’s escape from Laos after crashing during a Vietnam War mission, as well as Dengler’s refusal to give in to his captors’ demands that he renounce his loyalty to America. It’s a remarkable story of survival anchored by Bale’s fierce performance.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Let’s be clear: Tropic Thunder is not a movie about the Vietnam War, at least not the one that people who were actually there lived through. Instead, Ben Stiller’s raucous 2008 comedy is a film about the Vietnam War Hollywood Industrial Complex, a ruthless lampoon of blockbuster filmmaking, movie star theatrics, and our obsession with accuracy and gritty reality when it comes to dramatizations of the tragedy in Southeast Asia. It’s not an accurate film about the Vietnam War by any stretch, but as a movie about our obsession with that war in pop culture, it’s unequaled.

Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Four Vietnam veterans journey back to the jungle decades later in search of a treasure they left buried, and find a frightening, deadly, revelatory experience waiting for them in Spike Lee’s stunning Da 5 Bloods. Featuring great performances by Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, and the late, great Chadwick Boseman, it’s a film not about the war exactly, but about the things left behind in that conflict, particularly for young Black men pressed into service for a fight they never understood. It’s a gem of post-Vietnam wisdom, and a gripping thriller to boot.

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