Why Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump Has “Spot-On” Vietnam War Depiction Explained By Historian

Forrest Gump‘s Vietnam War scenes get put under the microscope by military historian Bill Allison, and he awards the film an impressive grade for accuracy. Released in 1994, Forrest Gump is directed by Robert Zemeckis, with Tom Hanks starring as the titular character. While the film covers a wide variety of recent American history’s greatest hits, there is an extended portion of the film in which Forrest goes to fight in the Vietnam War, becoming a war hero in the process.

In a recent video for Insider, Allison breaks down a handful of Vietnam War scenes from Forrest Gump, finding that there’s a surprising degree of accuracy in them.

Specifically, the historian analyzes an intense ambush scene from the film in which Forrest saves Bubba. Check out select comments from Allison’s analysis as well as his score for the film out of 10 below:

“This is actually very real. Ambushes are very common. The Viet Cong especially use the ambush, in part because they don’t want to be exposed in the open. What they do is they try to catch the Americans or the ARVN soldiers out on patrol. The VC would’ve been concealed and this clip you don’t see them. That would not be that unusual. A lot of the frustration that American soldiers experienced in Vietnam when they’re on patrols is they get hit but they cannot see the enemy.

“You can see that the enemy has them pretty sighted. They’ve got their mortars, RPGs pre-ranged. That’s why the Americans, Forrest Gump’s people, have prearranged lines for themselves to fall back to, what they’re calling the Blue Line. All of that is spot on, absolutely. I just wish Forrest would put his helmet back on. How many times someone gets ricocheted off the side of the head with their helmet on, and if you don’t have that helmet on, that’s all she wrote.

“So now he’s going back to rescue Bubba, and this is actually based upon an actual Medal of Honor citation. Sam Davis received the Medal of Honor for going back to retrieve actually three wounded comrades.

“I would say this one’s probably an eight [out of 10]. This is pretty good.”

Why Forrest Gump’s Vietnam War Accuracy Is Important

Forrest Gump Strikes The Perfect Tonal Balance

Forrest Gump may not be a straight comedy, but it undoubtedly plays many moments for laughs, with Forrest himself and the innocent way in which he views the world proving particularly funny in some instances. Crucially, however, the film lets its dramatic moments breathe, and there are just as many tear-jerking scenes as there are laugh-out-loud ones. This tonal balance is part of the charm of the film.

While the overarching story of Forrest, the man, certainly stretches the realm of believability, the historical events in Forrest Gump that he is involved in are mostly played straight. The Vietnam War scenes in the film aren’t sanitized, and they’re perhaps surprisingly violent given the tone of the rest of the film. The scenes help to cement Forrest’s character, and he remains calm and collected under fire. It can be risky for an actor to play someone who is developmentally handicapped in some way, but Forrest has layers, and his bravery in these scenes speaks to that.

Forrest is also someone who experiences a fair amount of loss, with Bubba’s death hitting particularly hard. Since Forrest himself is a fairly outsized character in many ways, the violent war scenes and Bubba’s death are a reminder that Forrest Gump still takes place in the real world. It creates a greater juxtaposition between the protagonist and his environment, and this is one of the reasons why Forrest Gump works so well.

Source: Insider

Forrest Gump

In this iconic piece of American film history, the presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson, the events of the Vietnam war, Watergate, and other history unfold through the perspective of an Alabama man with an IQ of 75.

Release Date

July 6, 1994

Director

Robert Zemeckis

Runtime

142 minutes

Writers

Eric Roth

Budget

$55 million

Studio(s)

Paramount Pictures

Distributor(s)

Paramount Pictures