Frantz gives them a crash-course in battlefield skills, punctuated by having a Viet Cong deserter silently penetrate a barbed wire barrier and aim a rocket launcher at them.

The platoon's specialists include the machine gun team of Duffy and Gaigin, along with African-American veterans Motown, Doc and Sgt.

The new arrivals get their first, sudden taste of war when a quiet spell beside a river is interrupted by an enemy mortar bombardment, during which replacement Galvan is decapitated by a bomb splinter.

In one assault, a battle-crazed and wounded Duffy, wielding an M60 machine gun, seems on the verge of carrying the day as enemy resistance begins to crumble.

Worcester describes to his comrades the alienation and hostility from anti-war college students, and the breakdown of his marriage, on his return from a previous tour of duty.

Doc tells Frantz and Motown to capture the hill so that they will at least have something to be proud of, then succumbs to his wounds moments before a medevac helicopter lands.

And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind."

These included prologue and epilogue scenes set years after the war where Frantz, now a civilian and happily married with children, visits the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. and asks his young son to plant a small flag below Languilli's name.

Another additional scene occurs one night between the assaults on Hill 937, where the North Vietnamese Army launch a surprise counterattack.

Writer and co-producer James Carabatsos had served with the 1st Cavalry Division in 1968–69 and spent five years interviewing soldiers involved in the combat there and researching the Battle of Hamburger Hill.

[3] In a 2021 interview John Irvin said that Hamburger Hill could have been released before Platoon and Full Metal Jacket "if Paramount had been a bit braver".

[4] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 64 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

[5] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Hamburger Hill a "well-made Vietnam War film that narrows its attention to the men of a single platoon in a specific operation".