A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the U.S.-Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.
New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg is on assignment covering the Cambodian Civil War, with the help of local interpreter Dith Pran and American photojournalist Al Rockoff. When the U.S. Army pulls out amid escalating violence, Schanberg makes exit arrangements for Pran and his family. Pran, however, tells Schanberg he intends to stay in Cambodia to help cover the unfolding story — a decision he may regret as the Khmer Rouge rebels move in.
Alex Cutter is a boozy, belligerent and deeply cynical Vietnam veteran whose encounter with a landmine during the war has left him minus an eye, a leg and an arm. When his drifter playboy friend Richard Bone is falsely accused of murder, Cutter sets out for revenge in his own inimitable style.
In Laos, 1954, eight days before the french defeat in the Indochina war, the 317th platoon – four french soldiers and 41 laotian combatants – has been ordered to leave its outpost and to retreat for the plains of Diên Biên Phu, where the french army is getting stucked. Led by the inexperienced and idealistic sous-lieutenant Torrens, fresh out of the military academy, and by adjutant Willsdorf, a WWII veteran of the Werhmacht, the group must cross 150 kilometers of jungle. But dripping rainwater, hostile nature, and the Viêt-minh ambushes expose them to constant danger.
The Herlihys are a working class family from Chicago whose three children take wildly divergent paths: Brian joins the Marines right out of High School and goes to Vietnam, Michael becomes involved in the civil rights movement and after campaigning for Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy becomes involved in radical politics, and Katie gets pregnant, moves to San Francisco and joins a hippie commune. Meanwhile, the Taylors are an African-American family living in the deep South. When Willie Taylor, a minister and civil rights organizer, is shot to death, his son Emmet moves to the city and eventually joins the Black Panthers, serving as a bodyguard for Fred Hampton.
John, a disillusioned Vietnam War journalist, turns to heroin smuggling. He cons Ray, an equally burnt out veteran into delivering the drugs stateside to his wife. Everything soon falls apart and Ray ends up on the run with John's wife trying to evade crooked narcotics agents.
In 1968 California, a Marine officer's wife falls in love with a former high school classmate who suffered a paralyzing combat injury in the war.
In a small Vietnamese village torn apart by war, a young woman faces unimaginable horrors before deciding to escape to the city. There, she encounters a compassionate Marine who offers her hope and a chance at a new life, igniting the possibility of a future together.
A poor French teenage girl engages in an illicit affair with a wealthy Chinese heir in 1920s Saigon. For the first time in her young life she has control, and she wields it deftly over her besotted lover throughout a series of clandestine meetings and torrid encounters.
A disk jockey goes to Vietnam to work for the Armed Forces Radio Service. While he becomes popular among the troops, his superiors disapprove of his humor.
Thirty years on from Vietnam, a government official is trying to track down soldiers who went missing in action, in the hope that it may lead her to her father. Meanwhile, a war veteran is forced to relive painful memories of how he was left for dead by his own platoon, and the heinous crimes he once committed while in the line of duty.
On the streets they call cash dead presidents. And that's just what a Vietnam veteran is after when he returns home from the war only to find himself drawn into a life of crime. With the aid of his fellow vets he plans the ultimate heist -- a daring robbery of an armored car filled with unmarked U.S. currency!
A group of Vietnam War veterans re-unite to rescue one of their own left behind and taken prisoner by the Vietnamese.
Carl Dixon decides to quit school and enlist in the Army, even though he's already run afoul of the law as a Vietnam protestor. It is our hero's intention to use love, rather than bullets, to combat the Viet Cong. Needless to say, his idealism is no match for the harsher realities of war.
After a drinking contest with some questionable local spirits, three friends wake naked on a beach to discover two are handcuffed to a locked suitcase, one has a strange new tattoo, and none of them have any clue what happened the night before. When they soon find themselves pursued by local gangsters, their only shot at making it home - and to the altar - is to piece together the previous night's events while on the run.
American servicemen are still being held captive in Vietnam and it's up to one man to bring them home in this blistering, fast-paced action/adventure starring martial arts superstar Chuck Norris. Following a daring escape from a Vietnamese POW camp, Special Forces Colonel James Braddock (Norris) is on a mission to locate and save remaining MIAs.
On a festive spring day in 1940, two young quan họ singers fall in love. But their relationship is soon ruthlessly disrupted by class injustices, imposed upon both—and many other Vietnamese—by the ongoing French colonial rule and the looming Japanese occupation.
After a confrontation with one of his idols dashes his dreams of studying public speaking in college, Richard Pimentel joins the Army and ships off to Vietnam. During his service, Richard loses nearly all of his hearing. Joining a new circle of friends, including a man with cerebral palsy and an alcoholic war veteran, Richard discovers his gift for motivational speaking and becomes an advocate for people with disabilities.
Lt. Col. Iceal "Ham" Hambleton is a weapons countermeasures expert and when his aircraft is shot over enemy territory the Air Force very much wants to get him back. Hambleton knows the area he's in is going to be carpet-bombed but a temporary shortage of helicopters causes a delay. Working with an Air Force reconnaissance pilot, Capt. Bartholomew Clark, he maps out an escape route.
Three 1960s California surfers fool around, drift apart and reunite years later to ride epic waves.