Cheap Hearts and Minds - Criterion Collection (DVD) (Peter Davis (II)) Price

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Customer Reviews of Hearts and Minds - Criterion Collection

The passage of thirty years exposes the film as an effective, but skewed propaganda film. No one is around to speak the Administration's position, unless you count the bullet-headed Westmoreland, whose banal comment that "the Vietnamese just don't value human life the way we do" is immediately skewered by scenes of a grieving Vietnamese mother trying to crawl into the grave of her dead son. The North Vietnamese are portrayed sympathetically, while American GIs come off as stoned-out waste cases.

I suppose, after years and years of being lied to by our government, we needed "Hearts and Minds" as an antidote, and the directors and producers of the movie were right to push the pendulum far to the left. It definitely is a valuable historical record of the war, and more importantly, the intellectual revulsion and rage against the war. The movie makes several sociological points, including the scene of the insane Midwestern high school football coach egging on and beating his rabid players. (This concept was later picked up in the opening high-school wresting scenes in the anti-war movie "Born on the Fourth of July" starring Tom Cruise.) .

Parents: The graphic real bordello scenes with acne-pocked American soldiers earned the "R"rating.

"Hearts and Minds" is not an objective work of history. The best historical documentary on the Indochina conflict from 1945 through 1975 is an out-of-print VHS series (available in a lot of libraries), Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: The 10,000 Day War."

A movie of modern history that made modern history
This is, without doubt, one of the best, most memorable movies I have ever seen. It has stuck with me since I first saw it as part of a high school film-making course in in Ottawa, Canada in 1975. It was the first, last and only time I ever saw it and I remember it all vividly 25 years later. At the time it exposed me to the absolute evils and sickening realities of a modern war for really the first time. It's lack of narrative adds a peculiar realism that I have never seen repeated in a documentary or fiction work. So controversial was the picture that at the 1974 Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences convinced the late Frank Sinatra to go on stage after it won best documentary to tell the audience the movie's award victory did not mean the Academy supported the movie's avowed anti-Vietnam War tone and tenor. The move by the Academy was unprecedented -- and has never been repeated. This movie must be re-issued. It is an outstanding testiment to the power of film.

Propaganda "Documentary"
Hearts & Minds is edited to make America look more evil than the communist North Vietnamese. The juxtaposition of scenes and images, the out of context sound bites, the carefully selected individuals for testimonials are all put together to make Vietnam Vets look like cripples, crazies, shells of human beings. Peter Davis' shameless exploitation of the family who lost a son to the war to advance this films agenda is sickening.

There is no balance to this film. There is nothing there to show you the brutality the North Vietnamese Communist Army inflicted on the South Vietnamese people during the war. There is no political look inside the North Vietnamese government. No North Vietnamese version of Clark Clifford and Daniel Ellsberg to interview. And then for Peter Davis to compare what happened in Vietnam to the American Revolution is ludicrous and scholarly dishonest.

When I saw this movie I had learned enough about film editing in the film classes I had taken to know the tricks of the trade to get to the emotional side of the audience. This film works. I too remember a quiet audience. However, there was some hissing when Westmoreland said we had beaten the enemy at Tet 68. Everyone in the theater thought Westmoreland was telling a lie because Walter Cronkite had said Tet was a defeat for us. We now know Westmoreland was right and Cronkite was wrong. The facts show we lost this war not on the battlefield but politically at home.

It is interesting to note that this DVD gets released in time take its place with other liberal diatribes against our country.

This film is worth watching if you want to see how to make an excellent propaganda "documentary" like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 4/11.