While Apocalypse Now is the target for Viet Thanh's Nguyen's criticism, I think his point is about Hollywood and the whole genre of Vietnam War films as a whole

While Apocalypse Now is the target for Viet Thanh's Nguyen's criticism, I think his point is about Hollywood and the whole genre of Vietnam War films as a whole. America lost the war but won it in memory. Most Americans when thinking of Vietnam only remember the war that was fought (a simple mistake in the American narrative), but it's a beautiful country with thousands of years of history.