MovieChat Forums > Dog Day Afternoon (1975) Discussion > Problem with movies then; all they had t...

Problem with movies then; all they had to say was he was a Vietnam Vet..

posted 11 years ago by kevin-bergin
8 replies | jump to latest

...and everyone just agreed he was troubled. No explanations, easy out for a screenwriter and unfortunate for those who came back to a hostile public.

[–] franzkabuki 11 years ago

Well there was a war on; killing and sh-t. That IS sort of self explanatory. Besides, it didn`t look like Sonny`s problems had that terribly much to do with Nam, anyway.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] kevin-bergin 11 years ago

"it didn`t look like Sonny`s problems had that terribly much to do with Nam, anyway." That's kind of my point.

They lumped all those guys in one package. Vietnam veteran-must be crazy, etc.

Unfair and frankly, sloppy writing IMO.

[–] boxerrebellion 8 years ago

and pretty much spot on for the times. It wasn't lazy writing. It reflected the US at the time.

[–] liscarkat (18456) 2 years ago

Not "spot on" at all. In the '60s and '70s I knew several men who served in the military, in combat, in Vietnam. None of them were crazy, or even depressed, let alone criminals. Almost all of the men I knew when I was a kid were WWI or WWII combat veterans, but not one was a psych case or a criminal. They just got on with their normal lives and didn't make a big deal about being veterans.

[–] LovingBooks 8 years ago

One of the worst problems that Viet Nam vets have (thank you all for your service, btw) is diagnosing post-combat disorders--they can be so different in each person. War is funny like that...what hurts one person will affect another person in a completely different way.

PTSD is a perfect example. Some vets come home and hit the floor when they hear a car backfiring, or those infernal fireworks on every holiday possible. Other people don't tolerate the dark, or sudden movements. Some people have a hard time making decisions, display irritability or moodiness, spend a lot of the time trying to rethink their experiences, trying to fit them in some preconceived molds. Depression, anxiety, feeling lost without a purpose are all possibilities.

So, IMO, writers ought to be more succinct in their storytelling if they want PTSD or other aspects of the war to figure in the overall story. It would at least clarify it all for us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Let's eat Granny!! Let's eat, Granny!!"
Punctuation matters.

[–] LovingBooks 8 years ago

[–] VinnieRattolle 10 years ago

Dismissing it as sloppy screenwriting is a bit unfair since this is based on a true story and we don't see more than a single day's events. The real life Sonny, John Wojtowicz, was a Vietnam veteran, and the war probably played more than a passing role in the events that followed -- Wojtowicz had his first gay experiences in the military, he was one of few survivors from his battalion, and it's explained in the documentary "The Dog" that he returned from the war a different man. I wholeheartedly agree that crying Vietnam Vet became an overused contrivance many 70s/80s films... but it was a grisly war and the fact remains that many of the men who returned actually were tormented.

[–] alioth4 10 years ago

Agreed it was simply symptomatic of the understanding of the day. I don't think PTSD was something very clearly defined then, and certainly not something that they knew how to treat properly. Killing fellow human beings, even in war, will take its toll because--despite some pessimistic beliefs about "human nature"--it is not natural for most human individuals to kill fellow humans, and when they are expected to, ordered to, or simply must for survival, actually doing it is going to come with a heavy psychological price. Thank God I have never done so or been ordered to, but I served in the Navy during (relative) peacetime. I can't imagine what something like that would do to me.

Even WWII vets experienced it, but the thing with that war was that it was so much a shared experience of the generation that they had a general support structure among their peers. Vietnam was a divisive war that many managed to avoid, so the poor guys that ended up over there felt especially alienated, and psychology had not progressed enough to fully understand its toll on them psychologically and spiritually.

Not that it's an excuse for crime or anything, but better understanding of the problem and rehabilitation back into society--or better yet, not putting them into that situation in the first place (since unlike WWII, it was very much a war of choice waged by our government)--would likely have prevented some of these PTSD-fueled crimes. We seem to have a lot better understanding of this with our Afghanistan and Iraq veterans anyway, and hopefully they are all getting the help they need if they suffer from PTSD.

Understanding is a three-edged sword.