*SPOILER WARNING*


im so sad that long had to die xD i really wanted him 2 escape T_T

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well yeah, everyone wants a happy ending, but of course they wont give it to you!

i thought the movie was pretty good. not exactly great, but a good start for the director.

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[deleted]

They probably wanted to show that people did die and didn't want you to finish the movie forgetting that. Whether in the re-education camps (approx 165,000 people died) or out on the open seas tons of people did die.

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I agree with hejustlaughs. If he had escaped and happily reunited with his family, it would have devalued the purpose of this film. The Communist regime in Vietnam, like all other Communist regimes destroyed lives. Many people were killed and many families were separated, never to see each other again. That was what I believe the message of the film was. Many don't know that after Saigon fell, thousands of people were tortured imprisoned and killed. The worst part about the story behind the film is that it was American Hippies and Leftist college know-it-all's that were much to blame for the out come of the war. Yes the South Vietnamese regime was corrupt and oppressive, but not anywhere near the communists. Also, the hippie protests and the American Leftists in the media supported the Northern Communists, and did what they could to turn public opinion against the Americans and South Vietnamese. The worst part is they claimed they protested in order to save Vietnam from the evil American military and bring peace and happiness to the country. Instead they made life twice as worse, and then turned their backs, rather then admit they made things worse. Then again, despite all the misery and terror communism brought to the country, the Communists did give free health care (sarcasm).

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Excuse me? The hippies and leftists were to blame for the outcome of the war? That's a screwed-up revisionist history if I ever heard one, and just plain ridiculous. . It was OUR government who drafted and sent young men over into a war which went on for far too damn long and killed way too many soldiers. There's a group called Vietnam Vetarans Against The War who would compleltely disagree with what you're saying--here's their website: http://www.vvaw.org/ Also, this guy was one of the architects of the Vietnam war and even he became skeptical about whether it was a winnable war or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara

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The parent post saying it was "hippies and leftists" was a crude way of stating things, but it does pretty much sum up the opinion of those of us on the right side of politics. There was a hella lot of pressure to pull the US out of Vietnam and that did directly result in some very bad things happening to real people.

There are of course counter-arguments but most righties argue they don't come close to weighing up against the suffering of the southern civilians.

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Pretty revisionist history....

It was a war exselated by 2 democratic presidents ... Many of the republicans at the time were isolationist and were siding with the hippies.... And I agreed with them.

But the point being, this was a wrong war and like the war in Iraq, it's main objective were the oil reserves off the coast of Vietnam which were considered the largest untapped oil reserves in the world at that time. The leases for those oil reserves were signed in October 1972, just a week before Kissinger came on TV and said "Peace is at hand." Which was conveniently exactly 1 week before the Nov 1972 elections.

Unlike you, I didn't have to revise history to make your political leaning conveniently more honorable..... What I posted is the truth. I researched my local newspaper archives and got copies of the articles to prove it.

There's enough blame, for both the Republicans and Democrats for the fiasco of the war in Vietnam.

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