One last, rueful look at our ‘Last Days in Vietnam’

It was on April 30, 1975, when the last U.S. troops left Saigon. Shots of those last helicopters lifting off from the U.S. embassy have become part of an indelible historical image. And, to be truthful, it wasn't our country's most honorable moment — despite individual instances of sacrifice and heroism.

Rory Kennedy's film "Last Days in Vietnam" takes us back to that moment. The documentary, which will screen on Spokane's Public Television at 8 p.m. April 28, is receiving near-universal acclaim. Some of the reviews make this clear:

Alan Scherstuhl, The Village Voice: "Vital, illuminating, and terrifying, Rory Kennedy's 'Last Days in Vietnam' probes with clarity and thoroughness one moment of recent American history that has too long gone unreckoned with… (T)his film is stellar, a dead-on stare at the moments this country tries not to remember."

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: "These stranger-than-fiction tales, piled one on top of the other in the most gripping way, not only mesmerize us, they also point up another of (the film's) provocative points, that the chaos surrounding the evacuation was, in effect, the entire war in microcosm."

A.O. Scott, New York Times: "The story is full of emotion and danger, heroism and treachery, but it is told in a mood of rueful retrospect rather than simmering partisan rage."

KSPS is offering a free preview of the film, 6:30 p.m. Monday, at the Bing Crosby Theater. The doors open at 6. So get there early.