Film pictures the establishment of a large and secret airbase, Long Chen, by the American CIA in LAos, near the Plane of JArs, in the period 1960 -1975. Officially, there were no American soldiers in Laos, but American pilots dropped staggering loads of bombs in the North-EAstern part of Laos, along the so called Ho Chi Min trail, used by the Norht Vietnamese, into South Vietnam and Cambodia. The CIA also set up an army of local hill people, the Hmong, led by their general Vang PAo. These hill tribes were the real victims in this secret war. Pictures on the scene in LAos, are cut with interviews of pilots and journalists who where present at the time, or tried to find out what was really happening there, since the US-government has always denied its involvement, until very recently. The area of Xiengkhong in NE Laos is up to the present day, considered unsafe because of pirating/fighting descendants of the local army of the past. The documentary was shown on German TV (ARTE) last week, unfortunately voiced over by a German translation of the interviews in English. I lived in Vientiane, LAos, in 1970/1971. Film seems an accurate account of what I saw and heard myself at the time.
2 Reviews
Not Even Good Propaganda...
conmarcg323 October 2014
Warning: Spoilers
What an awful, badly filmed, badly written bucketful of warm snot. Seriously.
With the access the filmmakers clearly had, they were presented with a unique opportunity to turn in a damning indictment of every single American administration from Kennedy to Obama -- and they threw it away on a lackwitted, not-good-enough-for-college piece of propagandistic trash.
Aside from the absolutely terrible, motion sickness-inducing post production effects - inserted, apparently, to make the film feel "edgy" - this film is loaded with half-truths, non-contextualized interviews, virtually no (I honestly don't recall seeing any, but I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, here) references to verify the factoids presented...the list goes on, and on, and on.
The production team clearly and deliberately edited their film to present one - and only one - thoroughly political point of view -- there is no "balance", no honest interview with the "other side": there is no mention of the atrocities committed by the Pathet Lao (mentioned by name less than five times in the film - "odd", considering that they were the victors in the war), but they take the time to mention a throwaway accusation - presented as "fact", although completely and utterly unverified - of Vang Pao shooting a 'traitor' out of hand; there are glaring holes in their interviews, indicating "ambush journalism" plus "creative editing"...and again - the list is almost endless. It would take longer, by far, to describe everything wrong with this film, than the runtime of the film itself.
It is absolutely unfathomable to me, how an interviewee can make a statement that over 900 men were lost in a single battle, yet there is not one question to said interviewee about the identity, character or nature of the opposing force...apparently, that level of discourse would stray too far off-message.
Likewise off-message, is how - by the production team's own statement - 250,000+ Hmong who fled to the US in the aftermath of the collapse of the anti-Communist forces were still willing to acknowledge Vang Pao as their leader...apparently, they are blood-thirsty mercenary savages supporting a murdering, drug-dealing, psychopath, because that is all the coverage this film gives to the Hmong.
While this may seem to be an overly harsh criticism to some, I have seen some of the production team's outtakes, posted to another site - in watching said outtakes in light of the film itself, it becomes crystal clear why those excerpts were left out -- because they completely change the character of the story.
Finally, I will close this with the one thing that seriously burned me off of this pile of garbage...
{SPOILER}
What grabs your attention in this film is the opening scene, with the wailing Hmong guerrillas when they meet the photog in the jungle in 2003...The film then spends the next hour completely ignoring those people - who are the real story - in favor of "America is bad, because they kill people".
Really -- take a good look at those people in the opening, because you will not see them again.
With the access the filmmakers clearly had, they were presented with a unique opportunity to turn in a damning indictment of every single American administration from Kennedy to Obama -- and they threw it away on a lackwitted, not-good-enough-for-college piece of propagandistic trash.
Aside from the absolutely terrible, motion sickness-inducing post production effects - inserted, apparently, to make the film feel "edgy" - this film is loaded with half-truths, non-contextualized interviews, virtually no (I honestly don't recall seeing any, but I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, here) references to verify the factoids presented...the list goes on, and on, and on.
The production team clearly and deliberately edited their film to present one - and only one - thoroughly political point of view -- there is no "balance", no honest interview with the "other side": there is no mention of the atrocities committed by the Pathet Lao (mentioned by name less than five times in the film - "odd", considering that they were the victors in the war), but they take the time to mention a throwaway accusation - presented as "fact", although completely and utterly unverified - of Vang Pao shooting a 'traitor' out of hand; there are glaring holes in their interviews, indicating "ambush journalism" plus "creative editing"...and again - the list is almost endless. It would take longer, by far, to describe everything wrong with this film, than the runtime of the film itself.
It is absolutely unfathomable to me, how an interviewee can make a statement that over 900 men were lost in a single battle, yet there is not one question to said interviewee about the identity, character or nature of the opposing force...apparently, that level of discourse would stray too far off-message.
Likewise off-message, is how - by the production team's own statement - 250,000+ Hmong who fled to the US in the aftermath of the collapse of the anti-Communist forces were still willing to acknowledge Vang Pao as their leader...apparently, they are blood-thirsty mercenary savages supporting a murdering, drug-dealing, psychopath, because that is all the coverage this film gives to the Hmong.
While this may seem to be an overly harsh criticism to some, I have seen some of the production team's outtakes, posted to another site - in watching said outtakes in light of the film itself, it becomes crystal clear why those excerpts were left out -- because they completely change the character of the story.
Finally, I will close this with the one thing that seriously burned me off of this pile of garbage...
{SPOILER}
What grabs your attention in this film is the opening scene, with the wailing Hmong guerrillas when they meet the photog in the jungle in 2003...The film then spends the next hour completely ignoring those people - who are the real story - in favor of "America is bad, because they kill people".
Really -- take a good look at those people in the opening, because you will not see them again.
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