Best movies like Hail, Hero!

The generation gap is more than just long hair, loud music, or a misunderstanding of ideals between father and son. It is a void from which a new force must emerge, a new hero!

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Hail, Hero! Starring Michael Douglas, Arthur Kennedy, Teresa Wright, Peter Strauss, and more. If you liked Hail, Hero! then you may also like: Tunnel Rats, The War at Home, The Naked Ape, The No Mercy Man, A River Runs Through It and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

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Carl Dixon decides to quit school and enlist in the Army, even though he's already run afoul of the law as a Vietnam protestor. It is our hero's intention to use love, rather than bullets, to combat the Viet Cong. Needless to say, his idealism is no match for the harsher realities of war.

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Tunnel Rats

During the Vietnam War [1959-1975] a special US combat unit is sent out to hunt and kill the Viet Cong soldiers in a man-to-man combat in the endless tunnels underneath the jungle of Vietnam. Suicide squads of a special kind.

7.4 / 10 1996 Drama
suggested by: user5672mb7hwhz

The War at Home

Jeremy Collier is a Vietnam veteran who has returned home and is struggling to cope with the war experiences that haunt him. He is also at odds with his family, who cannot begin to understand what he has been through. Jeremy's battles with his family finally spiral out of control on Thanksgiving Day, when a bitter secret is revealed

The Naked Ape

Somewhat based on Desmond Morris's fascinating book of pop anthropology, this partially animated satirical docudrama produced by Playboy Magazine publisher Hugh Hefner, traces the evolution of human kind and offers insight into the reasons why we behave the way we do. Though often dealing with sexuality, nothing in the film is terribly offensive or graphic. A prime example of mainstream experimental film-making from the early 70's featuring a young and breathtakingly lovely Victoria Principal.

The No Mercy Man

A decorated Vietnam Vet returns to his father's ranch in Arizona just as criminally minded carnies begin to cause trouble.

A River Runs Through It

A River Runs Through It is a cinematographically stunning true story of Norman Maclean. The story follows Norman and his brother Paul through the experiences of life and growing up, and how their love of fly fishing keeps them together despite varying life circumstances in the untamed west of Montana in the 1920s.

Jacknife

A conflict develops between a troubled Vietnam veteran and the sister he lives with when she becomes involved romantically with the army buddy who reminds him of the tragic battle they both survived.

6.3 / 10 1962 Drama
suggested by: user2892jn0zezq

All Fall Down

Ralph and Annabell Willart are a feuding couple who are constantly bickering over their worthless, good-for-nothing son Berry-Berry. When Berry-Berry begins yet another meaningless love affair, this time with an older woman named Echo O’Brien, he really gets his parents at each others’ throats.

Big Wednesday

Three 1960s California surfers fool around, drift apart and reunite years later to ride epic waves.

The Boys in Company C

Disheartened by futile combat, appalled by the corruption of their South Vietnamese ally, and constantly endangered by the incompetence of their own company commander, the young men find a possible way out of the war. They are told that if they purposely lose a soccer game against a South Vietnamese team, they can spend the rest of their tour playing exhibition games behind the lines.

Clay Pigeon

An ex-soldier is recruited by the FBI to go undercover in L.A. and find other ex-soldiers who are part of a drug-dealing gang.

First Blood

When former Green Beret John Rambo is harassed by local law enforcement and arrested for vagrancy, the Vietnam vet snaps, runs for the hills and rat-a-tat-tats his way into the action-movie hall of fame. Hounded by a relentless sheriff, Rambo employs heavy-handed guerilla tactics to shake the cops off his tail.

Malone

Erstwhile C.I.A. assassin Richard Malone hopes for a tranquil retirement in the placid Pacific Northwest, but what he gets is a rumble with a right-wing extremist plotting a secret revolution. Adapted from the novel "Shotgun," by William Wingate.

Desperate Hours

An escaped con, on the run from the law, moves into a married couple's house and takes over their lives.

The Deer Hunter

A group of working-class friends decide to enlist in the Army during the Vietnam War and finds it to be hellish chaos -- not the noble venture they imagined. Before they left, Steven married his pregnant girlfriend -- and Michael and Nick were in love with the same woman. But all three are different men upon their return.

P.O.W. The Escape

Col. Carradine leads a group of American P.O.W.s, battling their way to freedom as Saigon falls to the Viet Cong.

4.0 / 10 1988 Drama
suggested by: CosmicCheetah

'68

'68 covers exactly one year (January 1st through December 31st) in the lives of Zoltan Szabo and his family, Hungarian immigrants, working hard to make a life in San Francisco in 1968. The Szabos tries to adjust to the new country, changing times and each other. The year covered was one of particular cultural change in the US and this interplays with the cultural changes occurring around Zoltan, his wife and his two college-age sons. The younger of his two sons is gay and struggling with coming out. His dad disowns him when he finally does.

Behind Enemy Lines

An ex-marine returns to Vietnam when he learns his former mercenary partner whom he thought was killed is being held by a sadistic general.

Life, Animated

At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind ceased to speak, disappearing into autism with apparently no way out. Almost four years passed and the only stimuli that engaged Owen were Disney films. Then one day, his father donned a puppet—Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin—and asked “what’s it like to be you?” And poof! Owen replied, with dialogue from the movie. Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found in Disney animation a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world.

There Goes My Baby

It's the summer of 1965, and the members of the graduating class of upscale Westwood High are eager to reinvent themselves. Valedictorian Mary Beth wants to attend a liberal university. Surfer bum Stick plans to enlist to fight in Vietnam. Calvin lives in the poor Watts section of Los Angeles, which is slowly erupting in violence. As the summer nights grow long, they'll all be forced to make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives.

The Great Santini

As he approaches manhood, Ben Meechum struggles to win the approval of his demanding alpha male father, an aggressively competitive, but frustrated marine pilot.

Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except

Vietnam, 1969. War is Hell. For Marine Sergeant Jack Stryker, however, Hell is just the beginning. Trapped outside a Viet Cong village, Stryker takes two bullets to the leg. Sent home from the war, he discovers his ex-girlfriend has been kidnapped by a religious cult with a vicious Manson-like leader. Stryker teams up with some marine friends to form an assassination squad and annihilate the gang of crazed killers.

Heaven & Earth

Le Ly lives in a small Vietnamese village whose serenity is shattered when war breaks out. Caught between the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese army, the village is all but destroyed. After being both brutalized and raped, Le Ly resolves to flee. She leaves for the city, surviving desperate situations, but surviving nonetheless. Eventually she meets a U.S. Marine named Steve Butler who treats her kindly and tells her he would like to be married -- maybe to her.

Last Days in Vietnam

During the chaotic final weeks of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army closes in on Saigon as the panicked South Vietnamese people desperately attempt to escape. On the ground, American soldiers and diplomats confront a moral quandary: whether to obey White House orders to evacuate only U.S. citizens.

Missing in Action

American servicemen are still being held captive in Vietnam and it's up to one man to bring them home in this blistering, fast-paced action/adventure starring martial arts superstar Chuck Norris.Following a daring escape from a Vietnamese POW camp, Special Forces Colonel James Braddock (Norris) is on a mission to locate and save remaining MIAs.

Bullet

A tough, Jewish ex-con just released from prison crosses a powerful drug dealer and former prison rival in his return to a life of crime.

7.2 / 10 1999 Drama
suggested by: MoonlitMantis

Three Seasons

The residents of Ho Chi Minh City face modernization amid widespread poverty. A retired American Marine arrives on a search for his daughter, whom he abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War. Elsewhere, a cyclo driver falls for a troubled prostitute and schemes to raise money so he can spend time with her. Additionally, a young women begins harvesting lotuses for a writer suffering from leprosy, and a child trinket seller loses his traveling case.

Some May Live

During the Vietnam War U.S. decoder Kate Meredith is plagued with guilt when her husband coerces her to pass information to him and the Viet Cong.

Alamo Bay

A despondent Vietnam veteran in danger of losing his livelihood is pushed to the edge when he sees Vietnamese immigrants moving into the fishing industry in a Texas bay town.

Diplomatic Immunity

Cole Hickel, a Marine, pursues his daughter's killer when he is allowed to go back to Paraguay because of "diplomatic immunity."

Riverrun

Independent film by early New Hollywood figure John Korty

Safe Passage

Recently estranged from her husband, and mother of seven sons, Mag Singer stands poised to pursue a whole new way of life. But when one of her children is involved in an explosion while on duty in the Middle East, Mag must rexamine everything she cherishes.

Blood on the Arrow

In this western, the sole survivor of an Apache ambush rides out to save a young boy who has been captured. The hero was a captured outlaw en route to his trial.

5.7 / 10 1971 Drama
suggested by: artislife

Summertree

Jerry, not a member of the 'protest generation' but is instead, an 'All American boy,' is drafted into the Army, just as things begin to go well for him. He decision to flee to Canada sparks off conflict with his parents, ending in the film's conclusion - in Vietnam.

Phantom Raiders

Deep within the steaming tropical jungles of Vietnam is a Viet Cong terrorist training camp, run by an ex-Green Beret, William Marshall. A roving photographer stumbles upon the hidden camp and starts to take pictures. He is caught and summarily executed but the photos make it back to Washington. The CIA decide to send in an elite team of jungle warfare commandos, the Phantom Raiders, to establish whether Marshall is a POW or has gone bad. But another element has been added to this dangerous game. One of the Phantom Raiders is Marshall's son. Now he must come face to face with the enigma that was his father. The Phantom Raiders is a non-stop film of explosive action, with enough mayhem to leave you breathless.

Cry Macho

Mike Milo, a one-time rodeo star and washed-up horse breeder, takes a job from an ex-boss to bring the man's young son home from Mexico.

A Christmas Visitor

The Boyajian family learned of 18-year-old John's death in the Persian Gulf War on Christmas Eve eleven years earlier and have not celebrated Christmas since. They have been so consumed by his death that they have forgotten the joys of the holidays, until a mysterious visitor enters their lives and rekindles the spirit of the season.

Hamburger Hill

The men of Bravo Company are facing a battle that's all uphill… up Hamburger Hill. Fourteen war-weary soldiers are battling for a mud-covered mound of earth so named because it chews up soldiers like chopped meat. They are fighting for their country, their fellow soldiers and their lives. War is hell, but this is worse. Hamburger Hill tells it the way it was, the way it really was. It's a raw, gritty and totally unrelenting dramatic depiction of one of the fiercest battles of America's bloodiest war. This happened. Hamburger Hill - war at its worst, men at their best.

Go Tell the Spartans

Go Tell the Spartans is a 1978 American war film based on Daniel Ford's 1967 novel "Incident at Muc Wa." It tells the story about U.S. Army military advisers during the early part of the Vietnam War. Led my Major Asa Barker, these advisers and their South Vietnamese counterparts defend the village of Muc Wa against multiple attacks by Viet-Cong guerrillas.

Platoon Leader

West Point graduate lieutenant Jeff Knight meets cynicism when taking command of sergeant Michael McNamara's tour veterans platoon in a Vietnamese trench camp. Unlike his predecessor, who hid till the end of his tour, Jeff takes charge, experiences the manual doesn't allow coping with all realities and gets wounded. He returns, now fully respect by men and superiors. Besides the Vietcong, the platoon wrestles with the inscrutable villagers, which the G.I.'s officially protect, but also fear as some collaborate with them, other covertly with the Cong, either way subject to bloody reprisals.

84C MoPic

An Army cameraman is embedded with a reconnaissance patrol and charts their mission across territory controlled by the North Vietnamese.

Cage

A GI in Vietnam saves his buddy's life, but in the process is shot in the head. The injury results in brain damage to the point where he basically has a child's brain in a (very large) man's body. When they get out of the army the two open up a bar together, but some local gangsters make things tough for them after they refuse to take part in brutal "cage" matches where fighters battle to the point of serious injury and/or death.

The Iron Triangle

Based on the diary of an unknown Viet Cong soldier, this film provides a sympathetic look at a Viet Cong soldier who protected a captured American soldier whom he believed did not kill him when the American had the opportunity. Written by John Sacksteder

Fist of Glory

Vietnam. The last days of the war. A crack squad of Army special forces commandos led by Johnny Reynolds undertakes an unauthorized combat mission behind enemy lines with disasterous results.

Ministry of Vengeance

David Miller is a Vietnam vet who renounced violence and became a minister after he was forced to blow up a Viet Cong kid in self defense, but years later, when David's wife Gail and daughter Kim are killed by a group of terrorists led by Ali Aboud, in a massacre at an airport in Rome, Italy, David is devastated. Going against his faith, David sets out to find and kill Ali Aboud.

Last Stand at Lang Mei

Vietnam, 1968. Army Headquarters has written off Captain Fahey's men as Missing In Action after they were fighting deep over enemy lines. Cut off from their platoon, they must fight their way back, or die! A true story of bravery and courage set amidst the chaos of war, and witness the gripping conclusion to the bloodiest day in American war history

Kill Zone

An American colonel will pay any price to defeat the Viet Cong. When his unauthorized fighting force in Cambodia is discovered, he becomes a one man army, fighting a war of his own for a cause he knows is just.

We Only Know So Much

A married woman has an affair with a suicidal lover while caring for her husband's sick relatives.

6.5 / 10 1973 Drama
suggested by: user4558sc582mq

The Bad Bunch

A white ex-GI goes to a black ghetto to deliver a letter from his buddy, a black soldier who died in Vietnam. When he arrives there he encounters hostility and trouble from all sides.

Calm at Sunset

Drama about a young man who defies his parents by dropping out of college to pursue his dream of owning a fishing boat, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather.

To the Shores of Hell

A Marine officer leads a rescue mission through the Vietnamese jungle to rescue his brother, a doctor who has been taken prisoner by the Viet Cong.

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