AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Wordiezett So much average

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

kcme-32408 We were made aware of the documentary through our friendship with artist Binh Pho, one of the Vietnamese left behind in the embassy. He had shared his story many years ago and I had read his biography of how he escaped from Vietnam by Kevin Wallace; RIVER OF DESTINY. He told us about meeting with Rory Kennedy and his admiration for the Kennedy family. It was exciting to hear that he would be sharing some of his story in different places throughout the film. When it came to Dallas we went to the showing and we were taken back to our teenage years and all of the news and drama that Vietnam brought to our country. Seeing the real tragedy of what took place was very tense to watch. Living in the USA is such a blessing that so many of us take for granted, but shouldn't.

Sergeant_Tibbs The most impressive aspect about Rory Kennedy's Last Days In Vietnam is the wealth of archive footage it has to offer. I marvel at the time investment she must have had to link every shot to a real life anecdote. As such, the documentary does a great job of making those stories come to life. But ultimately it's quite limited. I can see why the Academy liked it, moreso than Life Itself anyway, it's essentially similar to Argo where people are escaping volatile places. And like Argo it focuses on that moment of release rather than any context or consequence, besides the ending results. The film feels like a similar story over and over with little development, though they are interesting in their own right. It's got a very standard documentary approach with its interviews and the emotion, and while it's easy to empathise, it's rather basic rather than conflicted and complex. A good doc but a small missed opportunity for more insightful greatness.7/10

Red_Identity I mean, something like this is precisely made, but it's also sort of an old-fashioned documentary with talking heads and narration over real documented footage. Considering the different formats that many recent documentaries take in terms of their executions, this sort of makes this become sort of mute. Especially though, the film's subject matter isn't something that I'd find particularly interesting or all that engaging. I'm sure to some it would, but not to me. I honestly found myself struggling to stay awake at times. Surely not the best barometer to judge a film by, but in many ways it is. Surely one to have to contemplate, and not one that I can honestly judge all that well.

Arnold F. Fege Rory Kennedy is a masterful story teller, and has combined that talent with historical accuracy in this engaging and truthful documentary. Having been a former AP reporter in Vietnam, I can verify that the US evacuation in 1975 is a little told story---a critical element of the war story, but often disregarded in the annuls of this war. But the evacuation is a catalyst for Ms. Kennedy to recreate the dynamics of how easy it is to get into war, but how difficult to get out. For Vietnam veterans, often not wanting to talk about their war experiences, Ms. Kennedy deftly interweaves the soldiers stories who were there, with an out of touch US ambassador who refused to believe that Saigon would ever be defeated, to a Congress that blocked any more funding to support a falling regime. But the soul of this story is how they all were morally and personally torn by leaving behind many of their Vietnamese counterparts who could not be evacuated in a very hasty and uncoordinated US departure. To add another original dimension, one of the US Kirk navy men had hours of 8mm footage of the evacuation that was uncovered in his attic and remastered by Ms. Kennedy for use on the documentary. One of our soldiers spoke for many of our troops when he said "that he sometimes even dreamed in Vietnamese." In one of the same, this may have been a small part of the war's history, but at the same time epitomized the entire war in 98 minutes of drama, skilled cinematography, stunning resolution and sound, and the riveting pain of war. As an educator and child advocate, I would urge that this be used as a resource in every social studies, history, and political science class rooms in the country.