To me, this and JFK are the best movies from director Oliver Stone, but the two are world apart as far as the movie goes.First the backdrop of each scene of this movie makes you yearn for somewhere to go home to. Then you see the tanks, the soldiers, and of course the war shows that home is being ravaged into a place where you can't go any more. I actually feel being torn away from the place of my heart, and I'm not even Vietnamese. So I'd say the visual impact of this movie is high.South Viet Nam was a relatively wealthy country in Southeast Asia because they had the perfect climate for growing rice and crops, but just because of the war, you see people becoming destitute. The way the story and the visuals comes together in this movie is one of the best I've seen. It really provokes something in the heart. I've never had a movie experience like this before or since I've seen this movie. The only negative I can see is the poor quality of Asian female actors. Except for Hiep who played the lead role, everyone else was bad to the point of being painful to watch.If a movie is supposed to tell the story and give the simulated experience of the people who are in the story, this is without a doubt one of the best movie I've ever seen.

This is the third movie in director Olvier Stone's unofficial Vietnam War trilogy after Platoon and Born On The Fourth July. It is the least known of these movies and also the worst of them. Which doesn't mean it's bad, far from it, it's actually pretty good.Like Born On The Fourth Of July (and many other Oliver Stone films), Heaven & Earth is based on a true story, this time around that of Vietnamese humanitarian Phung Thi Le Ly Hayslip. Though the Vietnam War is very much present in this movie, it is less a war movie than the previous two, instead more of a "biography" film. And one of the problems with this movie is that though the main character goes through many ordeals and suffers many hardships, you never really feel for her, connect with her. Or at least I didn't, and often found her to be somewhat annoying. Despite his prominent presence in the posters, Tommy Lee Jones is really more of a secondary character here and only appears about an hour and ten minutes into the movie, as a fictional character that was merged from two separate men in Le Ly Hayslip's life.Oliver Stone does have detractors and his latest films haven't been his strongest, but he's generally accepted as one of the "good" directors in Hollywood. Heaven & Earth isn't his best film, but it's still a very well-made one, with some beautiful shots of Vietnam (actually Thailand) and particularly brilliant scenes in America. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this film strongly, but once again, there's still some very good stuff in there, so if you're into Oliver Stone, movies about Vietnam War, or movies in general for that matter, it's a nice one to watch.

A different perspective of war, and very much needed one. This story covers the lives affected by war. The male lead undergoes emotional strain while the female lead contrastingly grows strength from, or perhaps in spite of the war.The movie's subtext is thankfully never handed to you in a Hollywood-direct manner - yet the movie develops it thoroughly for the viewer. This is the most plain statement there is that war is much more than the sides of the conflict, the survivors, the wounded, the dead. And, it makes clear that the trauma caused affects many for a long long time, and for each it is their own journey.Oliver Stone is obviously a master movie maker. He is a great story teller and you are always provided a visual and sound experience like no other. This movie contains some incredibly beautiful shots which all by themselves are worth the viewing. When combined with the plot, the beauty contrasts with the brutatilty to help develop the subtext mentioned above.You might notice I have never said if I like the film. Because the subject matter makes me queasy, uneasy, I don't think I could ever say I like this. But, this is a very powerful film that got under my skin. So, here I am recognizing the movie for its message and method, not necessarily for providing me a Pavlovian reaction seeking more.Instead of plopping in another war DVD, try this one. I bet you will walk away and it will continue to live with you.

Oliver Stone has always had a special bond with Vietnam. He is a veteran of that war and the theme about a veteran trying to cope with his war experiences is a subject that comes back in several of his movies. This is the last movie in his Vietnam trilogy. His first movie was "Platoon" (1986), his second "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989) and the third one was "Heaven & Earth" (1993).In Heaven & Earth he tells the true story of a Vietnamese village girl who survives a life of suffering and hardship during and after the Vietnam war. Before she meets and marries the U.S. marine Steve Butler, she already has had an entire life behind her. She once fled for the violence of the Viet Cong, leaving her farming village for Saigon together with her mother. But soon she disgraced herself by becoming pregnant with her new master's child and as an unmarried mother, she tried to make a living by being a freedom fighter, a hustler and sometimes a prostitute. As soon as they are married, they move to the USA, but life on the other side of the ocean certainly isn't as perfect as she imagined it to be...Some people say that it is a good thing that Oliver Stone has finally made a movie that shows the Vietnamese perspective of the war and I agree, but only to a certain extend. It's true that we only get to see movies that show the American side of the story and that we need other movies that give us a broader view on the matter, but "Heaven & Earth" isn't the only 'reversed' Vietnam film. Perhaps not many people know this, but the French movie "Indochine" (1992) does approximately the same. The main difference with "Heaven & Earth" is that it doesn't talk about the 'American' period, but about the French colonial period that proceeded it and in which time the Vietnam war really started (The French had almost lost all their battles when the Americans came to help them and thereby got completely stuck into the war themselves...). But it is true, Oliver Stone has done a nice job with this movie. He has made it an interesting character study, with the war always present in the background. The acting is very good and I don't think there could have been a better actor than Tommy Lee Jones to play the role of Major Steve Butler. The other actors all did a good job too, in fact, I might say that Stone has had an excellent cast to work with and he probably got the most and the best out of them.If there is one lesser point to this movie, although only a small one, than it must be the language. The Vietnamese all start by speaking almost perfect English to each other, but when they speak to Americans their English is poor, yet when they speak to each other in front of an American its in Vietnamese. I believe it would have been better if Stone had chosen to let the Vietnamese speak their own language all the time and to speak with an accent when speaking to the Americans. But as I already said, I only see this as a minor detail and it certainly didn't spoil the good times that I had with this movie. This is an underrated movie that deserves to be seen by a great audience. I give it a 7.5/10 at least, perhaps even an 8/10.