10 Greatest Vietnam War Movies of All Time, Ranked

The Vietnam War began in 1955, and the United States military intervention peaked in 1969. By the end of the U.S. involvement, 58,279 American soldiers had been killed, and over 3.1 million Americans were stationed in Vietnam at one point or another. This led to several filmmakers setting out to tell the story of this conflict, and very few of the movies had anything positive to show about the Vietnam War.

There were Vietnam War movies that earned Oscar recognition. Directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Werner Herzog, and Michael Cimino directed these films, with stars like Marlon Brando, Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, and Robin Williams in lead roles. There were even two Vietnam War movies written and directed by a Vietnam veteran about his time fighting overseas.

10 Born On The Fourth Of July (1989)

Born on the Fourth of July is the second Vietnam War movie directed by Vietnam veteran Oliver Stone. This movie stars Tom Cruise as a real-life Marine named Ron Kovic, and this is an autobiographical anti-war drama that follows Kovic through about 20 years of his life. It opens with his patriotic childhood in Long Island and then moves to Vietnam, where he serves in combat and comes home paralyzed.

The last part of the movie shows him dealing with his new place in life as he becomes a leading anti-war activist. Stone based the movie on Kovic's own 1976 memoir, and the director won an Oscar for Best Director, while Cruise earned his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor. This is Stone's second of three Vietnam War movies, and it remains one of Cruise's most acclaimed performances.

9 We Were Soldiers (2002)

In 2002, Randall Wallace directed the movie We Were Soldiers, based on the 1992 book We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Galloway. Mel Gibson stars as Moore in the movie, which dramatizes the 1965 Battle of Ia Drang, the first major battle between the U.S. Army and North Vietnamese regulars, fought at Landing Zone X-Ray.

Moore commanded the outnumbered 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, an ex-cavalry unit that held the landing zone against an overwhelming enemy force. The film follows both the soldiers on the ground in this battle and their families back home receiving notifications about the event. The war movie was praised for its authenticity as well as its attention to the families of the soldiers fighting in this war.

8 Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)

Good Morning, Vietnam is a 1987 movie by Barry Levinson that is a rare military comedy-drama set in Saigon in 1965. Robin Williams stars in the movie as Armed Forces Radio DJ Adrian Cronauer, whose irreverent on-air style boosts the morale of the troops but angers his more serious superiors. The story itself is loosely based on the real-life experiences of AFRS radio DJ Adrian Cronauer, who served in Vietnam.

This is a rare Vietnam War movie that is more concerned with daily life away from the front lines, and especially the disconnect between the official messaging and the reality of the war happening around them. Much of Williams' on-air material was improvised, and he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy and an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

7 Casualties Of War (1989)

Brian De Palma directed the 1989 Vietnam War movie, Casualties of War. The two main cast members here are one of the more interesting pairings in any war movie, as Michael J. Fox stars as Pfc. Max Eriksson, while Sean Penn stars as Sgt. Tony Meserve, the squad leader. The main story here involves the squad kidnapping, raping, and murdering a young Vietnamese woman.

Fox's Eriksson has nothing to do with the attack, but he finds himself bullied and threatened by his squad leader. The connection here is from a real story about the November 1966 Incident on Hill 192, in the Central Highlands, in which a squad abducted and murdered Vietnamese villager Phan Thi Mao. Eriksson was the government's key witness and testified against his squad.

6 Hamburger Hill (1987)

Released in 1987, Hamburger Hill is a John Irvin movie that follows soldiers in a gritty, ground-level combat situation. The plot follows a squad of the 101st Airborne Division as they make repeated, dangerous assaults up a heavily fortified hill. This is based on a real-life battle, which was the May 1969 Battle of Hamburger Hill, an assault by the U.S. Army's 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry, 101st Airborne on Dong Ap Bia near the Laotian border.

The main objective here was to take the hill, which was a well-fortified North Vietnamese Army position of trenches and bunkers. The bloody battle, with the mass loss of life, showed the true futility of the Vietnam War. The film emphasizes the physical grind and heavy casualties of taking the hill rather than a triumphant victory, offering a look at the true horrors of war.

5 Rescue Dawn (2006)

Rescue Dawn is a Werner Herzog Vietnam War movie from 2006 that is adapted from the director's own 1997 documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly. In this film, Christian Bale stars as Dieter Dengler, a German-American U.S. Navy pilot shot down over Laos early in the Vietnam War and held in a POW camp. After being imprisoned and tortured, he attempts a daring jungle escape.

Herzog made this movie because he believed his documentary left out several key details about what really happened. As a result, this fictionalized retelling adds many of those items back in. While a box office bomb, it received high critical praise, with a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it has become a cult classic for war movie audiences.

Stanley Kubrick made more than one anti-war movie over his career. His earlier film, Paths of Glory, shows how a military will even hurt its own soldiers to force others to follow its lead. In Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick takes on the Vietnam War, and here he splits his story into two parts. The first is the brutal Marine boot camp, with R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, a bully who doesn't make it out of this recruitment class alive.

The second part shows the men heading into the actual Vietnam War, their spirits broken but their desire to fight increased by the violent training they received. From the moment that one soldier finally breaks down and murders Hartman and then turns the gun on himself, to the soldiers marching through the jungles, Full Metal Jacket remains a harrowing experience.

3 The Deer Hunter (1978)

The Deer Hunter is a 1978 Oscar-winning Vietnam War movie that follows a group of friends from small-town America who are sent off to fight in the war, and none of them come back the same. The cast is incredible, with Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, John Cazale, Meryl Streep, and George Dzundza in the lead roles.

Three of the friends leave to fight in the war, and when they are captured during their service and forced by Vietnamese forces to play Russian Roulette, it breaks them all. This movie, though, is about the scars that the war leaves on men, and it follows them when they return home, all broken men. The final scene with Walken's veteran still playing Russian Roulette is harrowing. The movie won five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor (Walken).

2 Platoon (1986)

Oliver Stone's best Vietnam War movie was his first one. In 1986, Platoon hit theaters, and it was the first movie ever written and directed by a Vietnam War veteran. The movie follows Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen), a young volunteer who arrives in Vietnam in 1967 and ends up stuck between his two sergeants, one with good intentions (Willem Dafoe) and one morally broken (Tom Berenger).

Stone drew the film's action from his own experience when he served in the 25th Infantry Division near the Cambodian border in 1967-68. Stone was wounded twice and was awarded the Bronze Star. This movie was a box office success and won four Oscars, including Best Film and Best Director for Stone.

1 Apocalypse Now (1979)

The best Vietnam War movie of all time is the 1979 Francis Ford Coppola film, Apocalypse Now. The film is loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, and the story follows Martin Sheen as Capt. Benjamin Willard, a man sent into Cambodia on a secret mission to assassinate Marlon Brando's rogue Col. Kurtz, who had set himself up as a jungle warlord, leading a group of insurgents.

This is not as much about the war as it is about men who are trapped in a foreign country where their only existence is about killing or being killed. From Robert Duvall's Kilgore, who talks about his love of napalm, to Willard's journey into the heart of darkness to kill a decorated officer, it shows the moral collapse and the madness involved in fighting a war in another country. It earned eight Oscar nominations and is the definitive Vietnam War film.