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» » Erase and Forget (2017)

Short summary

'Bo' Gritz is one of America's highest decorated Vietnam veterans and the media turned him into the real life inspiration behind Rambo. He also killed 400 people, turned against Washington and moved to the Nevada desert where he now sleeps with many weapons. Filmed over ten years using impressive visual material, Zimmerman's portrait of Bo embodies contemporary American society in all its dizzying complexity and contradictions.

Winner of Platinum Reel Award at Nevada International Filmfestival 2018.

User reviews


  • comment
    • Author: Fordrellador
    This, at times, shocking documentary flows like a stream of consciousness, a fever-dream of cascading and often contradictory ideals--but throughout its duration, a profound anticipatory anxiety, a duress and hopelessness at the ever plodding on parade of images, emerges. Combining the long-winded ramblings of aging war-hero Bo Gritz, scenes from Rambo (a fictional character whom he inspired), shots from Bo's current life, and actual images from the Vietnam war, the film weaves a narrator-less experience that seems as much about war as it is about how our heroes and icons sour with age and reflection. Bravado for Bo transforms into cruelty, cruelty to doubt, doubt to this endless reflecting, tinged at once by regret/guilt and justification/nostalgia. We watch as Bo alternates between the two-- clearly troubled by the blood on his hands, and on the poised knife he often uses as a symbol for his country, but also unable to regret a life spend walking in the soldier boots of his father. "I don't want them to haunt me" Bo says of the people he's killed; a few hours after a man used Bo's own gun to commit suicide; but we can see the shadows under his eyes, the hunched tension of his posture. Bo is already a man, haunted.
  • Credited cast:
    Bo Gritz Bo Gritz - Himself
    Ted Kotcheff Ted Kotcheff - Himeself
    Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
    Gagik Gagik - Danielyan (archive footage)
    Tudor Gates Tudor Gates - Himself (archive footage)
    Jo McNeal Jo McNeal - Himself
    Jack Mercer Jack Mercer - Himself
    Richard Noe Richard Noe - Himself
    Scottie Scottie - Himself
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