What's the best Vietnam film -

A.� Hollywood has been fascinated by the horrors of Vietnam for years.

Film-makers only began to look at the war once it was over. John Wayne's The Green Beret in 1968 was slaughtered by the critics, and the studios didn't want to touch such a difficult subject.

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Q.� When did the studios look at the subject properly

A.� Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver in 1976 was a classic portrayal of the damaged veteran, which is the way directors viewed the conflict.

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Things changed when de Niro starred in the 1978 film The Deer Hunter�as one of several life-long friends scarred by the war. Critics argue the most telling films remain those of the late 1970s when there was still so much confusion about what had happened.

Coming Home explored�its psychological damage through the relationship between an angry paraplegic veteran, Jon Voight, and a hospital volunteer, played by Jane Fonda.

Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy - Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Heaven and Earth - follows the theme of the soldiers at war, their return and difficulty settling into their old lives.

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The Boys in Company C was a conventional platoon comedy, but it reminded the American audience of the young, impressionable young men it had sent to war.

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Go Tell the Spartans was set early in the war, much like the new movie We Were Soldiers, released this week.

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Q.� How did the American public react to these films

A.� The nation was shocked by Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now in 1979 and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness used the war as a metaphor for madness.

Critics believe that the 1982 construction of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington allowed the public to air its grief. The movies which followed - Platoon, Hamburger Hill, Full Metal Jacket - examined the horror of the fighting and the suffering of the troops.

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Directors began to find new directions in the war. Robin Williams starred in Good Morning Vietnam, the thriller Saigon was released and Hollywood turned its attentions to the gung-ho actions of its heros in film such as Rambo and Missing in Action.

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By Katharine MacColl