Military history professor Bill Allison rates more Vietnam War movies, such as "Forrest Gump," for realism.
Allison breaks down additional battlefield tactics used by the Viet Cong, or VC, and People's Army of Vietnam, or PAVN, during the Vietnam War, such as the ambush scene in "Forrest Gump" (1994), starring Tom Hanks, and the nighttime attacks of the Tet Offensive in "Full Metal Jacket" (1987). He covers the public perception of the Vietnam War in the United States, such as the war of attrition portrayed in "Hamburger Hill" (1987); the maltreatment of civilians in "Casualties of War" (1989), with Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox; and the overlap of the civil-rights movement with anti-war and anti-draft protests in "Da 5 Bloods" (2020), starring Chadwick Boseman. Allison also analyzes how the US and Vietnam have used film as a means of reflection after the Vietnam War, such as in the portrayal of the Viet Cong and American prisoners of war in the Russian roulette scene of "The Deer Hunter" (1978), with Christopher Walken, Robert De Niro, and Meryl Streep, and the narrative of unification of North and South Vietnam in "Mùa Gió Chướng" ("Whirlwind Season") (1978).
Allison is a professor of military history at Georgia Southern University. He has written several books about the Vietnam War, including "My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War." He is also a Vietnam battlefield tour guide with the UK company The Cultural Experience.
You can find out more about Bill here:
https://www.profbillallison.com/
You can check out Bill's podcast, "Military Historians Are People, Too!" here:
https://www.mhptpodcast.com/
