AllMovie

Made by North Vietnam during the height of the Vietnam-U.S. war, this feature portrays the soldiers of the South and their American advisors as brutal and cold-blooded killers. The region's hard-pressed villagers make desperate sacrifices to help the Vietcong. This particular feature was shown at international film festivals -- something the American Embassy protested, saying it was insulting to the U.S. One suspects that, following the uncovering of the My Lai massacre, such protests might have grown more muted. However, had the U.S. entered these same festivals with a contemporary war film like The Green Berets, surely the Vietnamese would have protested, so on the whole the showing of this film and the protests surrounding it are an understandable war-time situation.