Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam

Laudable though the intentions may be, there's something a little hollow about this all-star oral history of the Vietnam War that puts it close to Hollywood's big-name WWII dramatizations, A BRIDGE TOO FAR (1977) and THE LONGEST DAY (1962).

Using the medium of letters sent home by American soldiers (many of whom did not survive long thereafter), DEAR AMERICA takes only 84 minutes to relate America's 10-year quagmire in southeast Asia, wasting thousands of men in an increasingly incomprehensible war that the United States could neither win nor quit. Early dispatches (circa 1965) are optimistic and naive, as young recruits--median age was 19--speak glowingly of th...