Heaven & Earth
1993
*½
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Hiep Thi Le, Tommy Lee Jones, Joan Chen, Haing S. Ngor, Thuan K. Nguyen, Dustin Nguyen, Vinh Dang, Mai Le Ho, Dale Dye, Debbie Reynolds, Conchata Ferrell, Michael Paul Chan, Robert John Burke, Tim Guinee, Timothy Carhart
Le Ly, a young Vietnamese girl, endures escalating horrors as the war engulfs her homeland in the 1960s. She eventually meets a kind U.S. Marine, but life in the U.S. is not all it's cracked up to be. Following Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, the final part of Oliver Stone's Vietnam War trilogy concentrates mostly on the plight of a Vietnamese civilian. This fact-based story is based on Le Ly's memoirs When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace, but the film's 140 minutes include so much misery (violence, death, rape, unplanned pregnancy, prostitution, suicide, alcoholism, and domestic abuse) that the whole thing becomes overwhelming and numbing, and feels much longer than it is.
