Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Despite a common misconception that in its cinema of the Vietnam War Hollywood displayed a sense of realism and authenticity not seen before, the truth is more disturbing. A taboo subject for years, critics claimed that Hollywood’s lack of films about the war was in-keeping with their aversion to controversial subjects. However, the 1980s saw the floodgates open and a flux of films followed. Whether these filmmakers wished to tackle a sensitive issue or not remains irrelevant to the fact that a series of Vietnam films came only after one had been profitably distributed, which feeds the sceptics argument that Hollywood’s prime concern was, once again, the almighty dollar. The aim of this coursework is to assess how fairly mainstream American cinema dealt with the Vietnam War. I will focus my investigation on three films in depth, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and The Deer Hunter, but I will also allude to Oliver Stone’s Platoon, and the often overlooked Hamburger Hill. For me these films represent a justifiable range of different approaches to the war to explain their inclusion, and will be looked at as representations of Vietnam, and judged accordingly. It is important I stress that I am not reviewing them as films. At v