Director Carabatsos, himself a Vietnam veteran - considers his film the first Vietnam film to present the war from the ordinary soldier's perspective. In contrast to "Platoon" or "Full Metal Jacket" which he thinks of as political movies that Stone and Kubrick used to convey their political convistions, he just intended to shot a film about soldiers: "I wasn't going to sacrifice a 19-year-old soldier tp present my political views". He believed that most other Vietnam films had "a damn to do with what happened over there". Instead they were making the families of the soldiers belief, that their sons, fathers and husbands were maniacs and psychopaths. In contrast "Hamburger Hill" was to show that the men in Vietnam fought just as bravely and courageously as the men in i.e. Iwo Jima.
For ten years Carabatsos worked on the project, writing the scrict and obtaining the financial backing. The Army ecentually agreed to support the project, if only under the condition that some scenes involving soldiers with prostitutes and visits to whore houses were deleted, it further objected to the excessive swearing and recommemded that the line WAS IT WORTH IT in the final scene be deleted.
Critics complaint that the film did not open its limited perspective focused on the group of soldier at any time. The causes of the conflict are never refelcted, none of the soldiers ever debates what he is actually in Vietnam for.
"Platoon" hab been an enormous success, as the audience hab been awaiting a "realistic" Vietman movie. When "Hamburger Hill" reached the theaters eight months later, the peoples desire to see more realistic war images seemed to have been exhausted as box office numbers lagged behind the figures of "Platoon".