Product Description

Easily the most timely and resonant film about the soldiers on the front lines of antiwar resistance, the award-winning breakout theatrical hit SIR! NO SIR! Tells an almost entirely forgotten story of the military men and women who helped force the U.S. government to end the Vietnam War. Contrary to the popular image of long-haired hippies spitting on returning soldiers, SIR! NO SIR! vividly demonstrates that GIs were the heart and soul of the anti-war movement. Poignantly narrated by a diverse cast of veteran GI resisters who recall the ferocious days of peace marches and stiff jail sentences, SIR! NO SIR! pulls no punches in its raw depiction of the power of people, especially those in uniform. Directed by David Zeiger, SIR! NO SIR! is "powerful stuff, offering us not only a new look at the past, but to the unavoidably relevant insights into the present" (New York Daily News).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51507 in DVD
• Brand: NEW VIDEO GROUP
• Released on: 2006-12-19
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 84 minutes

Features

• Few Americans are aware that by the mid-1960s, many GIs had returned to the United States, disillusioned with America s participation in the ongoing war in Vietnam. A powerful documentary. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES Rating: NR Age: 767685984239 UPC: 767685984239 Manufacturer No: NVG-9842

Amazon.com
Pundits often make parallels between America's involvement in Iraq and the nightmare that was Vietnam; director-writer-producer David Zeiger's Sir! No Sir! does it too. But while the comparisons are generally apt (both conflicts are known as "quagmires," became hugely unpopular with the public, and inflicted serious political damage on the presidents who presided over them), this documentary makes a vital distinction: namely, that some of the most vocal and active opponents of the Vietnam War were the very soldiers who fought in it. These are haunted men who went to Southeast Asia because it was their duty, perhaps even because they saw it as the right thing to do, only to become sorely disillusioned when they witnessed the horrible injuries, the villages bombed for little or no reason, the civilians tortured and killed, and various other horrors that took place "in country." Some, like the so-called Nine for Peace, formed GI protest groups while still on active duty in Vietnam; some went AWOL (there were reportedly 500,000 incidents of desertion); a great many, including soldiers who refused to be deployed to 'Nam at all, were court-martialed and imprisoned in military stockades like San Francisco's Presidio, while still others returned home, joined movements like Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and published virulent underground newspapers. All of this is delivered via personal anecdotes, photos, and occasional file footage. The material is undoubtedly compelling, but Sir! No Sir! pretty much makes its point in the first half hour, rendering the final hour somewhat tedious. And that's not even including the nearly two hours of accompanying bonus material. Most of the latter consists of extended interviews based on what we've already seen in the main program; there's also a look at the Winter Soldier inquiry (the subject of a separate documentary), as well as a joint appearance by "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, Vietnam's most infamous celebrity protester, and Cindy Sheehan, who became an anti-war activist after her son was killed in Iraq in 2004. --Sam Graham

Review
3 stars (out of four)

In "First Blood," Sylvester Stallone's Rambo seethed about "all those maggots" who lined up at the airport to spit on him upon returning from the war he wasn't allowed to win. The public bought it.

Without disrespecting the real-world Vietnam vets who couldn't get the time of day from their country after coming home, the absorbing new documentary "Sir! No Sir!" honors those who fought, then questioned the morality of that fight, then joined the national protest. David Zeiger's film is straightforward in terms of technique. News footage from the 1960s and early 1970s connects the talking-heads interviews with the primary subjects, and the whole project has an unassuming, coffeehouse air to it. It's appropriate: The director spent part of the Vietnam War era in and around an off-base coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas, near Ft. Hood, named the Oleo Strut (after a helicopter shock absorber).

There and at many other such places, vets gathered, organized underground newsletter projects, dreamed up revolts small and large. Not all ex-military figures interviewed in "Sir! No Sir!" fought in the first place. Louis Font, considered the first-ever West Point graduate to refuse to fight, says on camera that he could not support "a war of aggression." Neither Font nor Zeiger draw obvious parallels to the morality of the nation's current war of aggression. No need.

Pentagon estimates cite more than 500,000 cases of desertion during the Vietnam War. "Sir! No Sir!" reminds us that while that number was high, hundreds, even thousands of combat vets going public with their disgust and outage was no less staggering. Late in the film, a surprising assertion comes from sociologist Jerry Lembcke, a vet who wrote a book ("The Spitting Image") in which he claims to have found no recorded instances of hippies (or whomever) spitting on returning vets--the Rambo business. While "none" sounds as dubious as "countless," this much is clear: Those who control the image flow and shape the myths control the war itself. At least for a while. --By Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune movie critic

Review
Written and directed by David Zeiger, "Sir! No Sir!" brings back to public consciousness the nervy and surprisingly pervasive GI antiwar movement that flourished during the Vietnam War, a movement that was more widespread than anyone wants to remember today.

Winner of the documentary audience award at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and a Spirit Award nominee, "Sir! No Sir!" doesn't mention the current war in Iraq, or for that matter, John Kerry, who was a prominent antiwar soldier. But then and now comparisons are inevitable.

Though not a veteran, director Zeiger was an organizer in that movement, and he has sought out and interviewed an exceptional group of idealistic men and women, articulate and strong-minded individuals who had the courage to act on their beliefs.

Without having to say it, "Sir! No Sir!" underscores what an engaged, activist group the people of the 1960s were. Even those who were conventional and patriotic enough to enlist in the armed services were so a part of that rambunctious generation that they could not stand still when they felt wrongs were being committed.

The first armed services members to speak out were inevitably true believers, people who had bought the myth of what we were supposedly doing in Vietnam and took it especially hard when the reality kicked in. Most notable of these was Donald Duncan, a decorated Green Beret who left the military in 1966, after more than a year in Vietnam, so early there was "no movement to join." Duncan loved being a Green Beret but came to feel that "the problem I had was realizing that what I was doing was not good. I was doing it right, but I wasn't doing right."

From Duncan on, the antiwar soldiers could not make their peace with the cynical use of torture and the elimination of women, children and civilians in accordance with what one of them called a "kill them all, sort it out later" philosophy. Louis Font, who felt Vietnam was a war of aggression, became the first West Point graduate in history to refuse war service, and Dave Cline, wondering why a man he just killed was dead while Cline was alive, came to feel that continued silence was "part of keeping the lie going."

The soldiers' antiwar movement soon spawned off-base coffeehouses in military towns, such as the Oleo Strut outside Ft. Hood, Texas, as well as underground newspapers that soon numbered more than 200. It also spawned a cabaret tour called the FTA Show (for Free the Army or something more profane), a kind of anti-Bob Hope tour that starred Jane Fonda, whose son, actor Troy Garity, is this film's narrator.

As "Sir! No Sir!" points out, the sheer statistics of soldier resistance are impressive. The Pentagon reported 503,926 "incidents of desertion" between 1966 and 1971, 1,400 active duty soldiers signed a New York Times antiwar ad, and incidents of fragging, the intentional shooting of officers, became noticeable. All of this culminated in the Winter Soldier Investigation hearings and the sight of veterans throwing their medals onto the steps of the Capitol.

One of "Sir! No Sir!'s" most interesting points is how the vital partnership between the peace movement and disgruntled soldiers has fallen from view, replaced in the popular imagination with the notion of peaceniks spitting on Vietnam veterans, something that sociologist Jerry Lembcke, author of "The Spitting Image," says likely never happened.

Despite his longtime interest, filmmaker Zeiger despaired of ever getting this story on film, until the post-Sept. 11 world made the conduct of American soldiers during wartime suddenly a hot topic. We may never recapture the spirit of the 1960s, but watching "Sir! No Sir!" should get us away from the idea that opposing a war means any disrespect to the troops. It wasn't that way in Vietnam, and it's not that way now. --By Kenneth Turan, LA Times Staff Writer

Customer Reviews

An angle we're not familiar with
We all--even those too young to have participated in it--recall the demonstrations that took place during the Vietnam war. Some of them had upwards of a million people at them. They represent what most of us remember as "the 60s."

But a movement of which we don't hear much is the movement within the services of men--mostly men as women didn't serve too many combat roles in those day--who opposed the war.

As informed as I claim to be, I knew little of this movement until I saw this fine film.

There were "underground" newspapers at the bases. Of course, law enforcement did its best to stop that. In one case, a troop was accused of having some marijuana in his car and was arrested thereby stopping his newspaper.

The army in that era tried to make themselves look like the "new army," just a bunch of wonderful guys preparing for a career and getting job training. (Their slogan at the time was FTA for "Fun, Travel and Adventure. The movements changed those words, and Jane Fonda and her fellow showpeople eased THOSE words a little to make them. "free the army.) But the Marines continued to "build men." But even the Marines had movements to end the war.

I liked the interviews with Fonda. The military did their best to keep the Fonda show off the road, but they had an audience, even among Marines! They loved it!

There's some great material in here. There's interviews with guys now in their 60s, and the things they did, the way they came around. Just lots of information of which I was unaware before. Great stuff.

But for the last portion of the film, the story concludes that the history has been rewritten. Not only do you not hear of these movements. But from clips in the films from "Rambo" and "Hamburger Hill" (the former of which I never saw and the latter I've never been able to figure out!), the public got the impression that there were demonstrators waiting for the returning troops at the airport when they returned from Vietman just waiting to spit on them.

First, I was a demonstrator for years and I never saw anything like that. I've talked with countless Vietnam vets, even Marines, to whom nothing of the kind ever happened. And veterans in the film not only state that they never witnessed anything like that, but the stories didn't jibe with reality. Like they didn't fly into airports but into air bases. So it couldn't have happened.

Well, that rewritten history portion of the film is important in these days of public relations fiascoes in which history is constantly rewritten.

I strongly recommend this fine documentary. If your interest is in the 60s especially the Vietman era, you'll see things of which you knew little before. It'll also give you a perspective on some of what seems to be taking place in today's military.

bravery at its best
Talk about brave soldiers. This documentary film tells the stories of the thousands of active duty GIs and retired veterans, both at home and in Vietnam, who agitated to end the war in Southeast Asia. Their means were many-- a network of coffee houses, a full-page ad in the NY Times signed by 1400 active duty soldiers, 300 underground newspapers, sits-ins, public marches, pirate radio, petitions, refusal to go on patrols, and even "fragging" (killing their superior officers with fragment grenades). Many of these people of conscience spent considerable time in prison. The original film footage of the Vietnam war and personal interviews with veterans who explain why they did what they did are deeply moving. These firsthand witnesses knew the truth of war-- the degradation, propaganda, government lies, cynicism, torture, and how war might turn some boys into men but it turns far more people into animals. I watched this film with a deep sense of gratitude. Popular history makes fun of Jane Fonda but consider this--in this film you'll see that her audiences included not just leftie hippies but 60,000 active duty soldiers who agreed with her. According to this film the Pentagon documented 503,926 "incidents of desertion." After watching this film read the book by Chris Hedges, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

Incitement to mutiny
There have been a good number of excellent documentaries examining various aspects of the Sixties protest movement ("The War At Home","Berkeley In The Sixties" and "The Weather Underground" but none focusing specifically on the members of the armed forces who openly opposed the Vietnam war-until now. "Sir! No Sir!" is a fascinating look at the GI anti-war movement during the era. Director David Zeigler combines present-day interviews with archival footage to good effect in this well-paced documentary.

Most people who have seen Oliver Stone's "Born On The Fourth Of July" were likely left with the impression that paralyzed Vietnam vet and activist Ron Kovic was the main impetus and focus of the GI movement, but Kovic's story was in fact only one of thousands (Kovic, interestingly, is never mentioned in Ziegler's film). While the aforementioned Kovic received a certain amount of media attention at the time, the full extent and history of the involvement by military personnel has been suppressed from public knowledge for a number of years, and that is the focus of "Sir! No Sir".

In one very astutely chosen archival clip, a CBS news anchor somberly announces that there appears to be some problems with "troop morale" in Vietnam (while in the meantime, behind closed doors, the US military was apparently imprisoning dissenting GIs left and right under "incitement to mutiny" charges, sometimes just for being overheard expressing anti-war sentiments). All the present-day interviewees (Army, Air Force,Navy and Marine vets) have interesting (and at times emotionally wrenching)stories to share. Jane Fonda speaks candidly about her infamous "FTA" ("F--- The Army") shows that she organized for troops as an antidote to the somewhat creaky and more traditional Bob Hope USO tours. Well worth your time. The film would make an excellent double bill with the clasic documentary "Hearts And Minds".