Based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, this Coen Brothers film is set in southwest Texas in 1980, and focuses on the world of a murderous sociopath, and on the life of an aging sheriff. It's a violent, disturbing, and ominous tale about post-Vietnam America—a hardened, soulless, and strange place.

Platoon is a fictional yet poignant account of the war in Vietnam from the perspective of a young soldier. In directing the film, Oliver Stone drew upon his own experiences as a young serviceman in Vietnam in order to portray the often psychologically disturbing and demoralizing aspects of warfare.

Sylvester Stallone stars in this notorious action film as John Rambo, a disoriented Vietnam veteran who uses his skills in guerilla warfare to escape police deputies in a small town in Washington state. First Blood is the first of a series of films, each controversial for its glorification of violence.

This Academy Award-winning film from director Francis Ford Coppola was inspired both by field reporter Michael Herr's accounts of the war in Vietnam and by Joseph Conrad's 1902 novella Heart of Darkness, a story about colonialism and a man's struggle between good and evil. Set near Vietnam in 1969, at the height of the war, Apocalypse Now is a fictional tale of a twisted search-and-destroy mission in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

The Deer Hunter is a gripping story about the impact of the Vietnam War on three working-class brothers from a small industrial town in Pennsylvania. The film follows the young men to the warfront, where they become imprisoned both physically and psychologically by the enemy and by their own inner struggles.

Hearts and Minds may be one of the most gripping documentaries ever made, and certainly the best documentary about the war in Vietnam. Director Peter Davis weaves new film footage with interviews, archival images, and news reports to explore the controversial war and the issues that drove the U.S. to fight in it.

Released in 1968, at the height American involvement in the war in Vietnam, Green Berets is a grand and optimistic story of American heroism winning victory over North Vietnamese tyranny. The movie, directed by and starring John Wayne, was the only feature-length film about the Vietnam War to come out of Hollywood before the fall of Saigon. Critics have since derided it as a conservative piece of pro-war propaganda.