Vietnam

Nicole does indeed play a brilliant part in this production. As she waits for her conscientious objector boyfriend to be released from prison, her expressions are priceless. The look of concern, relief then her happiness are very touching. Her strong red curly hair reinforcing the inner strength of her character. The music was also well matched with the haunting 'Woodstock' from Joni Mitchell finishing off what is a milestone in Australian Television and probably the first serious look at this wonderful actress and a bearing on what was to come. I remember telling anyone who would listen to keep an eye out for this outstanding young actress after seeing her performance.

Absolutely awesome seen a second time around - brought me to tears which takes a lot of doing - I wonder if we'll be looking at the same sort of movie about Iraq/Afganistan in 20 years time & wondering why the hell we were there. Fascinating to see Nicole Kidman in her first major film role. I do feel that the American soldiers were stereotyped as rapist, drug using murderous bastards - that was the only scene that didn't ring true. Listening to the 70's music was great. I was still at high school in England when the Vietnam War was happening - Seeing it from an Australian perspective is different. I now have a 21 year old Vietnamese girl as my daughter in law - her parents were both refugees after the war so it all seems a lot more personal.

I would like to reinforce the previous reviewer's comments.

This is a significant piece of film-making and deserves greater recognition.

The cast represents a large proportion of Australia's best talent of the period, many of whom have moved on to more widely known roles. Barry Otto was never better. Nicholas Eadie, John Polson and Mark Lee defined the youth of 1960s Australia. Jim Holt (I think) was a superb psychopathic special ops spook.

If Nicole Kidman wasn't a star after BMX Bandits, she was following the release of George Miller's Vietnam.

Bring the DVD RIGHT NOW!

In the mid 1980s The Vietnam War was very much a part of pop culture . Movie like PLATOON , FULL METAL JACKET and HAMBURGER HILL were making money at the cinema while book stores were full of publications dealing with accounts of the conflict and there was even a top five hit in the British pop charts by a singer called Stan Ridgeway who sang about his life being saved in 'Nam by a marine called Camouflage . What a lot of people ( at least in Britain ) had forgotten if they even knew was that Australia had also fought in the conflict and this mini series tells the story of one family's war

Vietnam was shown on BBC1 in the summer of 1988 with not much fanfare , but what wasn't mentioned was that two episodes would be edited into one . This certainly a good idea on the part of the BBC down to the simple reason that the early episodes are very , very slow as they introduce us to the characters of the Goddard family . The father is a politician in the Aussie government while the son gets drafted into the army while the daughter becomes a teenage rebel , and somewhat embarrassing to say it now but I couldn't help thinking that despite being a fairly good actress the Goddard daughter was one of the plainest looking girls I'd ever seen in an Australian series . The name of this actress ? Nicole Kidman . I digress

As I said the first two episodes ( Or first episode if you saw it in Britain ) crawls along at a snails pace and the series doesn't come into its own until the action switches to Vietnam . This show doesn't sugar coat the face of war : Vietnamese women are tortured and raped by the American army , young Goddard is seconded to an American special forces team and watches as prisoners are tossed out of a helicopter AFTER they've told the Americans what they've wanted to know , a villager is executed in public by the VC after refusing to hand over all the food supplies , but the most memorable and distressing scene features an Aussie conscript who stands on a mine . It's a special sort of mine that doesn't explode until after the victim takes his foot off it so the soldier has to stay there under the blazing jungle sun till he can take it no more , panics and dies .

I notice some people who have voted at this page ( Most especially the regular voters ) haven't been too impressed by Vietnam . The structure is rather uneven with a very slow beginning and the final episode(s) does hit you over the head that the war split Australian society but I can't help thinking the rather lukewarm response by some voters here has more to do with the fact they were expecting large battle scenes as in PLATOON and APOCALYPSE NOW . This is a foolish attitude since the Australians fought the conflict in a different way way from the Americans . Australia being experienced in anti guerrilla campaigns in Malaya and Borneo recognised the fact that this wasn't a conventional war therefore fought the war by sending small patrols into the villiages and jungles and went out of their way not to antagonise the inhabitants , a stark contrast to how the Americans conducted the war

Thanks to the internet there's now a large database of information of the Australian experience during the Vietnam conflict . It makes interesting reading

It's 2.30am and I've just finished watching this again. I was an Australian "grunt" with the 3rd Battalion in Vietnam 1971 and although most of the war was boredom, this is without doubt the most realistic portrayal of the Australian side of the war that you will see. Admittedly, it's the entire 10 year war condensed into one persons life, but if you try to imagine yourself in the shoes of a young 20 year old, you may get a glimpse of what it was like. The politics, clothes, civvy life, emotions, conscription, protests and the war were very accurate. This isn't your usual gung-ho macho shoot'em up Hollywood Rambo movie. It's about as close as you'll get to what it was like during the war. The most amusing part is the fact that Nicole Kidman wasn't even born when we were fighting the war! Yes - it is slow in parts, but this movie isn't about macho heroes. It's about simple 20 year olds like me who never wanted to hurt anyone, but were sent to a place where there were virtually no rules. We were dropped by chopper into a jungle and we could kill anyone who wasn't one of us - no questions asked. If you want to see the real thing, then this is the one to watch - NOT Rambo!!