Vietnam films were a new breed of war film and I'm not just talking about the film

specifically about Vietnam.

The stakes of World War II were so high and the greatest generation's disposition

as a people, so specifically stoic, that the films they themselves made about their war were

imbued with a reverence. These were important stories

told about a good war, a war in which 73 million people died and that touched the

lives of almost everyone on earth.

Even in corny adventure films about World War II, the necessity of the war wasn't one of the

questions the filmmakers set out to ask.

But by the time the Vietnam War kicked off, some of the luster had worn off of telling war stories.

That's why so many of the World War II films we've watched from the late 60s onward feel like they're trying to

re-litigate things.

They're grappling with issues presented by war for their contemporary audiences in the safe confines

of a war that didn't make us wonder, are we the badies?

The American self-image, at least for the subset of Americans

whose socioeconomic, religious, and ethnic identities

have traditionally been panned or two by our culture, has always been one of being the good guys.

We are the country that was founded by the guys that landed here and had a nice Thanksgiving

dinner with the Indians, but then we saw the injustice of tea taxes and we dumped the

tea in the harbor and have been fighting injustice ever since. Like that time we

fought to defeat slavery or that time we came to the rescue twice and two back to back world wars.

The long arc of history bends toward justice and it's hard to fight for justice, but we

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