Perhaps the reason you get them mixed up is because they are in fact both James Carabatsos movies.

"Hamburger Hill" (1987) was a gritty, realistic war drama depicting a famously bloody battle in the Vietnam War. "Heartbreak Ridge" (1986) -- directed by, produced by and starring Clint Eastwood -- was about a grizzled old Marine tasked with shaping up an undisciplined unit ahead of the U.S. invasion of Grenada.

You have plenty of good reasons for getting the two mixed up. Apart from the H-names, and the fact that they were war dramas released a year apart, they were both penned by Vietnam veteran James Carabatsos.

They're the two best-remembered films in Carabatsos' limited Hollywood career. He only wrote seven films over the course of his 25 years as a screenwriter, and four of those were war movies.

While "Heartbreak Ridge" had the greater star power (i.e. Eastwood), "Hamburger Hill" was clearly Carabatsos' passion project. In an extensive interview with the L.A. Times in 1985, while he was struggling to get it made, he said that it was the sort of movie that Vietnam vets like himself were craving -- one that showed the war like it was, "for the guys who were there, for their families."

He dismissed previous, highly respected Vietnam pictures "Apocalypse Now" (1979) and "The Deer Hunter" (1978) as being the unrealistic representations made by people who weren't there. "As far as film about the war fought by the draftees, well, I haven't seen it yet."

It would take him another two years to get it made, and it would come as part of a spate of realistic Vietnam films, including "Platoon" (1986), made by fellow veteran Oliver Stone.

Though not a chronicle of a real battle like "Hamburger Hill," "Heartbreak Ridge" had its realism as well, particularly in the title: It was named after a real Korean War battle, where Eastwood's character was supposed to have won his Medal of Honor.

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