~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

[Year 1997]
[Year 1998]
[Year 1999]
[Year 2000]
[Year 2001]
[Year 2002]

Vietnamese actor hit for role in US film

HO CHI MINH CITY - Condemnation and disciplinary measures being imposed on a well-known Vietnamese actor for his role in two Hollywood movies, including one that touches on the Vietnam War, are the government's latest moves to ensure more order in cultural and artistic activities.

Attracting national attention is the case involving Don Duong, 45, an actor branded by state-run newspapers as a "national traitor" for his role in two US movies, including We Were Soldiers. A resident of this southern Vietnamese city, Duong has appeared in numerous domestic productions about the Vietnam War years. But now, Vietnam's National Film Censorship Council (NFCC) wants him barred from acting for five years and from traveling overseas.

The controversy erupted after bootleg copies of We Were Soldiers - which focuses on the first major battle between North Vietnamese forces and US troops in 1965 - came on sale in early July at Huynh Thuc Khang, the city's popular quarter for pirated compact disks and digital video disks. Within no time, government officials, press commentators and film critics had condemned the movie as distorting the truth about the US involvement in the Vietnam War, reflecting the issue's sensitivity nearly three decades after US troops pulled out in 1975. The film censorship council concluded that We Were Soldiers "rubbed out the frontier between just and unjust wars, said that the Vietnamese army lost the battle while in reality it wins, and has finally distorted the true image of Uncle Ho's soldiers".

As for Duong, NFCC deputy chair Luu Trong Hung said he "has lost honor among the people and has become an instrument in the hands of forces hostile to the Vietnamese nation" by taking part in the offensive movie, where he played the role of a North Vietnamese commander. The council made its pronouncements after the Ministry of Culture and Information asked it in early October to state its position on the film.

We Were Soldiers depicts the battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam's Central Highlands in which the 7th Air Cavalry led by Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Moore, played by Mel Gibson, is overrun by a more experienced North Vietnamese army led by commander Nguyen Huu An, played by Duong. The movie is based on the book We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young by Moore, who is now a retired lieutenant-general. Movie critics say the film tried to show the human, courageous and self-sacrificing side of soldiers on both sides, and has scenes of US and Vietnamese families grieving for their soldiers.

But although history records the North Vietnamese as having won the bloody three-day battle in which about 400 US troops find themselves surrounded by some 2,000 Vietnamese soldiers, the film appears to show that the US side won. Tran Thu Ba, 24, a third-year university student, said, "The film is not worse than the other Hollywood films on the Vietnam War. The main problem is that this time it is the other side who was more humane and who won the battle."

The state media were far more vitriolic in their reactions. "This is a very politically reactionary movie with the wicked intention of distorting the legitimate national liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people and at the same time justifying the unjust war of aggression of the American imperialists," the newspaper Nguoi Lao Dong (The Laborer) declared in a front-page commentary.

The army's official newspaper Quan Doi Nhan Dan (the People's Army) soon after joined in, commenting in a front-page article that the movie "did not reflect correctly the truth of history of the just war by the Vietnamese people". Duong had tarnished the image of the Vietnamese soldiers and people, and had "sold his conscience cheaply and become a national traitor", Quan Doi Nhan Dan said.

The media also took issue with an earlier Hollywood acting role by Duong, who played the role of the head of a refugee camp in the 2001 movie Green Dragon that starred US actor Patrick Swayze. The film censorship council also said that Green Dragon, which depicted the life of Vietnamese refugees in a US camp after the war, contains many scenes that "distorted the reality" in Vietnam. The council proposed that the Culture Ministry and the Ministry of Police ban We Were Soldiers and Green Dragon and that they refuse entrance visas to Randall Wallace and Tony Bui, the respective directors of the films.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh agreed with these recommendations, saying last week that Duong "could be punished for going abroad [to the United States] with a wrong purpose, eventually to work in movies but not to visit relatives as he had stated". "It is very regrettable that an actor who used to enjoy popularity in Vietnam, who took part in big movies now has taken part in movies that damage his own image. That's the most severe punishment to an actor. It will be heavy losses for an actor when he loses popularity," Thanh said.

In early October, Culture Ministry officials removed a Vietnamese film starring Duong, Me Thao Thoi Bong (The Glorious Time in Me Thao Hamlet), from the list of the country's movies screened at the 47th Asia-Pacific Film Festival in Seoul.

By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam - Inter Press Service - November 2, 2002