Like Michael Moore's movies, David Zeiger's pseudodocumentary "Sir! No, Sir!" sells a single perspective. Not for a split second does it open its lens wide enough to acknowledge a dissenting voice.
Beginning with the ironic use of The Shirelles' patriotic 1962 hit "Soldier Boy," it arrives more than three decades after the Vietnam War to turn into heroes those who would be labeled treasonous by others -- one-time members of the U.S. military who participated in the desertions and organized protests of the G.I. Movement, including the court-martialed Dr. Howard Levy.
Without any reference to communism or its influence on the war or upon anti-American dissent, it champions mutiny -- a word invoked repeatedly -- and talks up "the criminality of the U.S." and the culture of dissent.
It juxtaposes a recent interview with Jane Fonda with clips of her in "F.T.A," the box-office flop antiwar review that she, Donald Sutherland, Peter Boyle and others performed for military audiences near bases in Asia and the Pacific during the Vietnam War.
Troy Garrity, Fonda's son by Tom Hayden, narrates "Sir! No, Sir."
Bob Hope, who did shows for military personnel for more than half a century, is mentioned only as someone who was jeered.
The picture implies that the function of the war was to kill women and children, who are intercut with archival shots of bombings. That's as deep and as misleading as it gets.
The movie's production and design serves no apparent purpose so many years after Vietnam but to manipulate opinion about the war in Iraq through a perspective so narrow the film might more accurately be called "Suspect. Wholly Suspect."