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This article discusses key scenes from Apocalypse Now Redux, Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, Platoon, Directed by Oliver Stone, 1986 and We Were Soldiers, Directed by Randall Wallace, 2002. These scenes will be used to reinforce or dismiss the statement Hollywood Vietnam films view the conflict as a specifically American tragedy'.

Apocalypse Now Redux is about one man's struggle to kill another man. The main character, Charlie, has a mission to kill another soldier, Kurtz, who has become almost a god to the Vietnamese. The film follows Charlie on his physical and mental journey to kill Kurtz. The use of a narrator allows the audience to understand Charlie's thoughts and feelings, which lead us to believe that he has a serious problem with killing a fellow American. We hear him say that he has killed many Vietnamese people; however killing one American seems to bother him. Again, this allows us to believe that the film is meant to show the American tragedy, and not the Vietnamese. It seems the Vietnamese that he kills are not people or are not equal to Americans, which makes the film obviously biased. However, at the time of its release, Vietnam was still very painful to many of the American people, and therefore they did not want to believe that it was all a waste of life and resources. If a Hollywood film were to identify with the Vietnamese, then the veterans would feel guilty about killing all of those people. However, if the film identifies with the Americans and shows the villagers as barely human, then this becomes acceptable.

The entire opening sequence of Apocalypse Now Redux says a lot about the whole film. However a key scene, The Ride of the Valkyries', which occurs just after this is the one under discussion. For a start, the audience is being asked to identify with the American soldiers, rather than the Vietnamese villagers. This is clear by the way the camera shows close-ups of the American's faces to the audience. We also see them talking with each other and we know their names furthermore the film is generally set up from an American viewpoint. Each of the American troops has a name and a face that we can recognise and identify with. However, the Vietnamese villagers are just people. The film does not give us their names or their character's back-story, we simply see these people being gunned down, regardless of who they are. The film does not use subtitles to tell us what the Vietnamese people are saying, so again, we do not understand

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