Private Nolan vanished 40 years ago in mysterious circumstances from the Vietnamese border with Cambodia. The US military says he went native, joining the Viet Cong before being murdered by the Khmer Rouge, but it won’t release the files.

What’s known is that he did propaganda work for the Viet Cong and married a Vietnamese woman. But then it turns murky. Did he slip into Cambodia rather than face being returned to the US at the end of the war? Did he become one of the million victims of Pol Pot’s killing fields? Or was he the American who spoke to a retired US Army Lieutenant in 2006 during the veteran’s visit to Cambodia? 

Part thriller, part meditation on the brutality of war, the film follows Michael Nolan on a brother’s quest for new facts in a buried past. Did McKinley abandon America or did America abandon him?

Directed by Henry Corra
2011
88 mins