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Run, don’t walk, to see George Butler’s vivid, impressive, scrupulously researched documentary about John Kerry’s Vietnam years — and bring along an army of the unconvinced. This is the Kerry campaign film of one’s dreams, for it builds an irrefutable case for Kerry as a genuine war hero who deserved every one of the medals and commendations he was awarded. Butler takes us back to the Mekong Delta and shows us actual footage of the swiftboats sailing up hallucinatory rivers. We hear from a chorus of Vietnam combatants amazing stories of Kerry’s bravery, of how, for example, he chased a Vietcong sniper into the woods and shot him dead. Pure John Wayne! More important, Butler stays with Kerry as he comes home to America, and, more valorous still, leads the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. We see Kerry’s extraordinary testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he’s praised by both Democrats and Republicans; and there are similar instances when this very serious, very determined 27-year-old with the Jay Leno chin speaks so eloquently that his rhetoric achieves almost Lincoln-esque proportions. A traitor? Kerry back then was such a clean-living patriot that even Richard M. Nixon’s "dirty tricks" department could find nothing with which to discredit him. Butler has been a pal of Kerry for 30 years, and this lovely paean to the Democratic standard bearer of 2004 is the ultimate act of friendship. (130 minutes)
BY GERALD PEARY
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