The other exceedingly false portrayal of Vietnam, Hamburger Hill, a film stamped with the official approval of the U.S. Department of Defense, is more discriminating in its distortions. Based on a true incident the film asserts that Vietnam was not lost on the battlefield. The filmmakers advance that argument in a series of scenes devoted to the troops discussing the mood back in the States. Faced with a public that sees them as baby killers, then, their will to fight is sapped. And yet, despite the handicap, a few members of the company depicted manage to take the objective hill, albeit at the loss of the majority of their fellow soldiers. So in the case of Hill, the filmmakers offer that poor results in Vietnam come, not from the mistaken judgment of those whose arrogance committed our young men to the rain forests of Southeast Asia, but from a public who could not stomach the grim necessities of guerrilla warfare. ...
