I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Powerful

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Neil Sheehan's masterpiece tells the Vietnam War story through a single biography. John Paul Vann was an American who overcame a humble background & made a distinctive, heroic career as a soldier, adding a beautiful wife & 3 kids along the way. Preparing for promotion to high rank, he went to Vietnam in the early 1960s as an adviser, one of the select few to take the fight against Communism right into combat. But Vann was also a man with deep personal issues: haunting, shaming memories of childhood poverty, a weak father & a libertine mother, leading perhaps to his own aggressive infidelities including one with an underaged girl that nearly led to court-martial. And his "fight" in Vietnam was merely a series of bureaucratic exercises in which the Americans were bogged down by South Vietnamese intrigues, both unwilling & unable to do what was necessary to defeat the Communists. Terry George explores this theme with the steady pace, methodical yet engrossing, that was later such a triumph in the remarkably similar "Hotel Rwanda." Paxton has his work cut out as the very complicated Vann, a dedicated soldier who is not only everything an Army officer should be, but also a true warrior whose devotion to victory trumps his loyalty to the establishment & thus even his own career. Yet Sheehan's Vann has a shocking capacity for self-harm, hating the ignominious background that was not his fault, indulging himself in sexual adventures that wounded his family & threatened his career as readily as he embarked on reckless combat missions. It's all Paxton's show & he takes us on a fascinating odyssey of an officer whose slow realization that the Army would rather lose the war by the book than win it by tossing away the book (it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game?) causes him to leave the Army but, after a short, sad foray into business, return to Vietnam as a civilian administrator who steadily accumulates unique, vast military authority. Paxton's Vann wants to understand Vietnam's people & culture--but only enough to help him in his war effort--leading him to turn his back on his tormented family & take a Vietnamese wife (Wu). But for Vann, everything in his life is devoted to victory, a personal goal, an intense obsession, that he will achieve whether America or Vietnam like it or not. Paxton is suitably restrained, uttering no war cries like Stallone or Norris, making no personal journey of self-awareness or redemption as in "Apocalypse Now" or "Uncommon Valor." The professionalism of the art of war is his mantra, the belief that the everlasting principles of the true warrior will realize the high ideals of democracy & capitalism over the despair of communism. George doesn't give Paxton the opportunity to go too deeply into Vann's personal life (the book WAS very long, after all), so Vann comes across as a complex but not quite complete antihero. The other actors are there to help paint the Vann picture rather than those of their own characters. Madigan is very fine as Vann's loyal wife driven to despair as much by Vann's obsession with the abstract concept of victory as his gross infidelities. The superb Kurtwood Smith gives the best film portrayal of Westmoreland ever on screen--decisive, firm, unapproachable, unhearing--though he has only minutes to do it. Kay Tong Lim is as restrained as Paxton in depicting the clever Colonel Cao, Vann's ARVN partner & as self-serving as Vann is idealistic, who goes from being Vann's great hope to his frustration to his nemesis. The action scenes are low-budget & unremarkable, but audiences were long ago falsely conditioned to view Vietnam as a series of either personal or spectacular cowboy-vs-Indian fights. Vann's presentations for Pentagon & White House big-shots, in which he dramatically holds up handfuls of rice to underscore the importance of winning over Vietnam's farmers, are far more poignant. If the Vann of Sheehan, George & Paxton has a valediction, it's that the war was lost in Washington, not in the field--a view that's hardly original but is still very hard to wrap one's mind around. Many viewers will find "A Bright, Shining Lie" quite unsatisfying entertainment, but that's the problem with dramatizing nonfiction, the risk of presenting a story that's trying to teach. But, if it tries to teach, it doesn't try to preach, and at least the sun doesn't set in the East.

I had received the book and DVD for Christmas last year. Being ignorant on much of the Vietnam War, I decided to read the book to see if I could apply anything to the Iraq situation. My brother told me to watch the DVD first because if I read the book first, the movie would be a huge disappointment. I read about 3/4 of the book and then watched the movie. Needless to say, the movie was a disappointment. It tries to cover way too much in a short period of time. Bill Paxton is OK as Vann but every scene is way to short. Several characters are composite characters rather than the actual person. Donal Logue appears to be a composite of David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan. Eric Bogohosian is completely miscast as a composite of Doug Ramsey and Daniel Ellsberg (I think they call him Doug Elders in the movie). The beauty of the book is the detail that it has. There's about 100 pages on Vann's 1962 stint and how he became completely frustrated with the American leadership in the war. There's about 100 pages on the history of Vietnam. There are about 100 pages on the Battle of Ap Bac and the fallout. The book weaves Vann's life in and out of the story of the Vietnam War. The movie makes Vann the centerpiece, so it becomes very difficult to get the background information and non-Vann information that one needs to understand Vann and the war. How could you do that in two hours?

This made for TV movie was absolutely fantastic as far as I am concerned. I think Dianne Crittenden did an excellent job with the cast. Bill Paxton as John Paul Vann did a great job. I don't really care for Amy Madigan, but she portrayed Mary Jane Vann divinely. Donal Logue made the perfect reporter as well.

The Vietnam experience seen through the eyes of an officer average american with family back home and the good intentions, often rebuffed, that are frustatingly hard to put in place. After "Good Morning Vietnam", which was a non-combat movie about Americans in Vietnam, this one comes close in describing what Americans felt in the war. This movie, however, is still a combat war movie, but sprinkled with family and personal issues, presented straight forward and down to earth. Produced by HBO, it is surprisingly a good production, with good acting.