Product Description

This classic HBO documentary features reenactments of actual letters written by soldiers during the Vietnam war. In each case, a famous celebrity voice (Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox, Robin Williams, and others) reads the letters to us.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13988 in DVD
• Brand: HBO HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2005-11-01
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 87 minutes

Amazon.com
All the confusion, pain, despair, and even hope of the men and women who served in Vietnam is captured in Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. Read by dozens of actors such as Harvey Keitel, Matt Dillon, and Kathleen Turner, these letters show a more human story of the war than we see in most media outlets and reveal real people in real situations trying to explain or understand. The footage, some newsreel, some shot by the servicemen and servicewomen, reveals a tension between the soldiers' actual experiences and the presentation their loved ones received from television. The soundtrack weaves the songs of the 1960s with the readings to create a compelling aural snapshot of the time, which complements the video exceptionally well. While it's not a "feel-good" movie, the viewer does get a sense of the indestructibility of human dreams. --Rob Lightner

Customer Reviews

Powerful - a CAN'T MISS or MUST SEE movie for educational & historical purposes/values
Being a 5 years old boy living in Saigon (a peaceful but lively city even in war time) in 1972, I hardly noticed that the country was at war. If not for the facts that my father was an ARVN officer, news war footages on TV everyday, and once in a while seeing tanks & soldiers roaming & patrolling the countrysides, I wouldn't have thought or reminded of how much destructions the VN war brought to Vietnamese/US civilians, soldiers and their families.

Watching Dear America: Letters Home from VN for the first & only time on Veteran's day in the early 90's on PBS, I have found the utmost respect for all the young US men, women & their families who sacrified so much for that politically unwinnable war. I have watched, read a lot about this war from many different perspectives, but nothing has come close to truthfully provide personal experiences, heartfelt losses, and devastated destructions this war has caused as this documentary movie does.

I wanted to have a chance to watch this movie again for so long. It's so powerful in every sense of its word. It's a CAN'T MISS or a MUST SEE movie for educational & historical purposes/values. I have goose bumps from thinking about the movie now. I just can't wait to watch it again, the DVD is coming in a few days.

Unforgettable Depiction of Vietnam
In the mid-nineties, when I was a high school student, my A.P. English teacher showed us clips from this movie as part of a weeks-long unit entitled war. Simply hearing the emotionally-laden words and viewing the clips of these young soldiers moved many of my classmates, not excluding myself, to tears. Almost a decade later, with the feelings and images still in my mind, I came online to order the dvd. The second viewing was as equally moving as the first. The ending is especially potent. An excellent addition to anyone's personal collection of media related to war/Vietnam/war literature.

The definitive Vietnam War movie
There has come a lot of vietnam movies over the years. Quite frankly, because the Vietnam War upset a lot of people. All the other movies does however have a plot.

This movie does what it is supposed to do. Instead of putting plot before fact, here we get a documentary. No plot. This documentary runs along smoothly, with beautiful and sad music, while letter, after letter is read so we can hear the REAL tradegy that the war REALLY was: The letters made it home, but not the boys who wrote them. So it is somewhat different hearing the letters being red, while seing the destruction, and human tragedy first hand. But it does become more real that way. I highly recommend this movie to anybody who want to broaden their minds to what the Vietnam War really was for many people, and sadly is for many people still living today.

On a side note:

Great for its educational value also:

Me and two others had a presentation in 1998 about the Vietnam War, and how terrible it truly was. We only had this movie as our source of information.

We got an A.