You watch enough 70s/80s action movies, you are going to run into at least one Vietnam vet. An undercurrent of, almost entirely, American cinema using the fallout of returning soldiers after Vietnam to tell all sorts of stories (generally action stories). Shorthand to explain why a character has the expertise to fire a gun and set up a bomb, and maybe a little messed up in the head. Was mindful of the difference between a war movie and what I consider 'vetsploitation'. My cut off is the story can only 'flashback' to the war, and if it shown 'as it happens', it can't make up more than a quarter of the run time.

Have tried to open up the genre to vets of any war, but I don't know if any particular veteran is more exploited as a trope than those of Vietnam.

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