Released 1993
Stars Hiep Thi Le, Tommy Lee Jones, Joan Chen, Haing Ngor
Directed by Oliver Stone

She is born into a time of tranquility, in which the people of her village live as they have for many centuries. All is ordered; everyone has his place, including the ancestors who are buried on land that has been in the same family since time immemorial. Then a warplane streaks across the sky, and in an instant all she knows is destroyed. Her name is Le Ly, and her destiny will take her from the rice fields of the Central Highlands to the suburban split-levels of California.

Oliver Stone has made films about Vietnam from the point of view of a combat infantryman and a disabled veteran, and now in "Heaven and Earth" he completes his trilogy by viewing the war through the eyes of a Vietnamese woman. The story is factual, as were Stone's "Platoon", inspired by his own combat in Vietnam, and "Born on the Fourth of July", based on the autobiography of Ron Kovic. "Heaven and Earth" is based on two books by Le Ly Hayslip, who is now a successful Vietnamese-American businesswoman in California.

For ordinary farmers who wanted only to tend their crops, the war brought horrible choices. We watch as Le Ly's village is visited both by Viet Cong propagandists and American and South Vietnamese advisers. We see her savagely mistreated by men from both sides, who effortlessly translate their patriotic zeal into the act of rape. We see her separated from her family, joining aimless columns of refugees, and finding herself in Saigon in an economy where the Americans had all the money - and what a lot of them were buying were sex and drugs. Into her life one day comes a tall, craggy American named Steve Butler (Tommy Lee Jones), who does not want her as a prostitute, but as a bride.

In a time when few American directors are drawn toward political controversy, Stone seeks it out. He loves big subjects and approaches them fearlessly. The Vietnam War is the most important event in recent American history, but only Stone has made it his business as a filmmaker.

Summary by Roger Ebert