everything you have heard about this movie is true.

An action-packed slog

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The third, and most likely final , film in Oliver Stone's trilogy about the Vietnam war is here.In "Platoon" we learned of the horrors of war through the eyes of new recruit Chris Taylor, "Born on the Fourth of July" covered the story of Vietnam veteran come anti-war activist Ron Kovic, and "Heaven and Earth" finally completes the picture by giving us the Vietnam perspective.Based on two autobiographical novels by Le Ly Hayslip, this high powered drama concerns her struggle for survival in war torn Vietnam, as both the allied forces and the North Vietnamese Army constantly threaten her village with death and destruction.Once again stone has created a thought provoking and disturbing piece of cinema, as we follow young Le through her tragic life from ravaged Vietnam to the United States. Hiep Thi Li is very impressive as Hayslip in her film debut, while Tommy Lee Jones, Haing S. Ngor and Joan Chen are strong in support. The cinematography (Robert Richardson) is quite superb as is the sweeping score (Kitaro).Unfortunately "Heaven and Earth" is not as forceful and powerful as the previous films, but this can be attributed to the fact that it is once again not as focused a work as its predecessors, and also because we've seen it before in Stone's earlier war epics, thus it doesn't have the same shocking effect.However, little else can be faulted in yet another eye opening drama from Oliver Stone.Wednesday, January 26, 1994 - Knox District CentreThe final part in Oliver Stone's Vietnam experience is told from the Vietnamese perspective with both compassion and conviction.Based on Le Ly Hayslip's (pronounced Lay Lee) autobiographical books "When Heaven and Earth Changed Places" and "Child of War, Woman of Peace", our director's screenplay tells the heartbreaking story of a young woman's devastating journey through life, from an innocent victim of war, to the troubled wife of a U.S. Marine.Following on from his powerful war epics "Platoon" and "Born on the Fourth of July", Stone has crafted a very different and somehow more emotionally involving drama. A magnificent performance from newcomer Hiep Thi Le brings us close to Le Ly's plight as she is first tortured by the Allies and the V.C., then forced to leave her village and try to survive on the streets of Saigon.Strong support comes from Academy Award winner Dr. Haing S. Ngor, Joan Chen and Tommy Lee Jones. Robert Richardson returns to again bring us some startling images of war, as well as some impacting pictures of western society (one particular wide lens shot of a refrigerator alone manages to put our indulgent, wasteful culture to shame). Kitaro provides a sweeping score and the Art Direction and Set Decoration keep things very authentic.As in "J.F.K.", Oliver Stone has crammed so much into "Heaven and Earth" that it's a lot like trying to cope with "Reader's Digest". Yet, though it starts slowly, Stone shows for a third successive time the evil of war and the way in which it destroys lives, families, villages and entire countries. "Heaven and Earth" is also a sobering reminder of our flamboyant and richly blessed lifestyle, and one that's free of the ravages of war.If you don't object to being bludgeoned with a point of view, then all three of Oliver Stone's Vietnam works come highly recommended.Sunday, October 23, 1994 - Video

This movie gives a passionate and realistic view of the war. Things that really happened such as army guys trying to bring Vietnamese wives back to American and trying to make it work out. Like others have commented it makes you question who really started this war and for what reasons. Tommy Lee Jones character says it all in that quiet whisper that turns into an ugly argument when he tells his wife his mission is and has always been from the beginning to sell arms to countries such as her country. So it gets you thinking about what war is really about. Obviously the soldiers are trained to follow orders and not think about or question those orders. That would result in discharge. And for many in the war it dragged on for years on end and eventually people realize the pointlessness of it. How can the supposed most powerful nation on earth loose a war? You can break their backs with superior technology but you can't break their spirit. And you can never completely eradicate a poor people from their own country. There will aways be a resistance no matter how small. So you can never really win. It's like the old school yard bully who beats up on all the small guys. But as long as people despise the power and strength of the arrogant and evil bully there will always be resistance until the bully eventually pulls back and his pride injured. This has happened throughout all of history in all the world empires. Why is it we believe we are something different? This movie in someways gets you to think about that. Could it possibly be that we are the ones to blame? That we are where the problems started? But of course no one wants to consider that when it is so much easier to and cowardly to blame other people. That is why this film wasn't as well known and didn't rake in the multi-millions as other more popular Rambo movies.

This is Oliver Stones third trip to Vietnam but unfortunately also the least interesting and successful. That's a shame given that Stones previous efforts where at least very solid, but even more because this was the first US-American film to put a Vietnamese victim into its centre. The Vietnam films of US-production companies never gave much thought to the victims, even if they were very critical of the United States' role in the war. "Heaven & Earth", however, fails to give the viewer an insight into the pain and sorrow the victims really suffered, because it wants to be too dramatic and meaningful. Much more seriousness and much less sensationalism would have been able to turn this into a good film. The closer the film gets to its end it loses and loses credibility. Tommy Lee Jones' storyline was unfitting and wrong for me, that I almost lost my complete interest in this woman's story, because I just didn't believe it anymore.

''Heaven & Earth '' is an amazing story of a woman called Le Ly,and I consider it to be specially a story of not only survival, but victory in life.The fact that this story was real,makes this film even better,since we can see that optimism and a real power to go ahead,can make our lives change for the best. Le Ly is a Vietnamese village woman, who lives during the hard times of Vietnam war. She passes through the worst things in her life, since being tortured by Vietcong,being a fighter and also a teenager mother,who needs to be a prostitute in order to have something to her and her son to eat. When she marries an USA soldier called Steve Butler and goes to America,her life was about to change for the best,but years passed and Steve became a violent man and also an alcoholic,and again, Le Ly have big problems in her life. The good thing is that she will become a rich woman with her business in USA,and even today (yeah, she is alive!) she helps many people from Vietnam.