Early in the 1960s I joined the protests against US involvement in Vietnam, kept protesting as that involvement grew, and kept on after the withdrawal of US troops while money and supplies continued to flow to Vietnam. I mention my actions, which were no more than what thousands of others did, only to "place" myself on the subject. And to me, the torture sequence in The Deer Hunter—the Viet Cong forcing their US prisoners to play Russian roulette—did not seem intrinsically incredible: because neither I nor anyone I knew objected to the Vietnam War on the ground that the North was angelic. We knew fairly early of the tortures and murders done by South Vietnamese and US forces, but we also knew of tortures and murders done by the North Vietnamese. The issue for us was US intervention—its effects there and at home—not the...