Search - Heaven & Earth on DVD

MPAA Rating: R Content Advisory: Violence, Adult Situations, Questionable for Children Movie Release: 1993 DVD Release: 01/16/2001 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV - Closed Captioned Edition: Dual Layered,Restored/Remastered Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 20 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Members Wishing: 0 Genres: Drama, Psychological Drama, Docudrama, Marriage Drama

With Heaven and Earth -- cobbled together from two autobiographical reminiscences (-When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and -Child of War, Woman of Peace by Le Ly Hayslip -- Oliver Stone completes his self-declared "Vietnam Trilogy" (the other films being Platoon and Born On the Fourth of July) of films examining the Vietnam War from different perspectives. Heaven and Earth begins in the central Vietnamese village of Ky La during the 1950s. Phung Le Ly (Hiep Thi Le) is an innocent peasant girl, helping her mother (Joan Chen) to tend the rice paddies while being lectured in the ways of life by her father (Haing Ngor). The idyllic peace of the village is disrupted when a jet bomber crosses the skies. Soon the village is decimated as the American-backed South Vietnamese government troops and the Viet Cong engage in brutal warfare in which the victims are the innocent villagers. Le Ly is both tortured and raped. She leaves Ky La for Danang for a life as a prostitute. There she meets the tall and craggy American soldier Steve Butler (Tommy Lee Jones), a kind but lonely man who isn't looking for sex but for someone to settle down with -- as he says, "I want an Oriental wife." They marry, and Steve takes her back to the United States, where her in-laws look at her not as a wife but as a pet. In the harsh glare of 1970s U.S. culture, Le Ly has trouble adjusting to the American way of life. But not as hard a time as her husband, who, after twenty years in Vietnam, discovers he cannot adapt to civilian life. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Tommy Lee Jones - Steve Butler
Joan Chen - Mama
Dr. Haing S. Ngor - Papa
Hiep Thi Le
Debbie Reynolds - Eugenia

The least known of Oliver Stone's Vietnam films, Heaven & Earth comes to DVD with a widescreen anamorphic transfer that preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1. A closed-captioned English soundtrack is rendered in Dolby Digital 5.1, and a French soundtrack has been recorded in Dolby Digital Surround. English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles are accessible. Supplemental materials include a commentary track recorded by Stone, an alternate 30-minute beginning to the film, a theatrical trailer, and deleted scenes. This is a very good disc from Warner Bros. that will hopefully find the viewers who failed to turn out during the film's theatrical release. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide