When I was looking for things to watch on my Amazon Fire, I was surprised to find this very obscure documentary from 1971 which starred John Wayne. And, as a retired US History teacher, I did find it interesting....though flawed.
Wayne hosts the film and introduces a variety of people sharing his views on how the Vietnam War should be fought. One thing about the war that is often forgotten is that although it was unpopular in later years, much of this was due to HOW the war was being fought and many were not against the US being at war but the politicians' running of the war. This is a big part of the show...pushing for politicians to stop micromanaging the war and let the men fight an all-out war. This aspect of the film is interesting and if fought this way, the war MIGHT have been won by the US and South Vietnam. Apart from this aspect of the film, I did find that the film never questioned why the US went to war there in the first place and some of the history lesson given by Lowell Thomas was suspect...such as him calling Lenin 'Vladimir' (a common mistake...but he was NO Vlad). I also was surprised when he mentioned that Charles Lingburgh was a war hawk in WWII...which was completely untrue. Lindburgh was actually pro-Hitler in the 1930s and only became pro-war after the US was attacked.
So is it any good? It's okay...and, oddly enough, the worst part about it was Wayne's poor delivery of his lines. It also didn't help that there were CONSTANT refrains from the song "The Ballad of the Green Berets"...to the point of inducing nausea. As far as a history lesson, while not always accurate, it did provide an interesting insight into how the war might have been successfully fought. Overall, a film most people probably wouldn't watch in the first place, but at least the history teacher in me found a few things to like.