Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry is a documentary film on U.S. Senator John Kerry's military service during the Vietnam War and his subsequent participation in the peace movement. There is significant emphasis on Kerry's famous speech before a Senate committee, historical footage from the Winter Soldier Investigations, and coverage of the Dewey Canyon III anti-war demonstrations in Washington, D.C. The majority of the film is composed ofarchival footage, with much of it in the original black-and-white format. From the producer's website, : Going Upriver is the culmination of a forty-year friendship between Kerry and George Butler. They first met in 1964 while Butler was a reporter and photographer, and published a book together in 1971. Butler has documented Kerry's political career with thousands of photographs, and Kerry is godfather to one of Butler's sons. Butler builds a portrait of Kerry through conversations with the men who served with him, people who went to college with him, and relatives. He narrows the story to Vietnam, and uses vintage footage to show the duty to which Kerry asked to be transferred. The recollections from his shipmates, and shots of battle and battle damage on his and other swift boats, underscores the nature of the duty and Kerry's performance of it. The video of his TV appearances and congressional testimony when he got back provides the context to Kerry's change of heart on the war and his determination to see to it that his comrades stopped dying over there. Considerable attention is paid to the lesser known activities and details behind some of that era's most tumultuous events, such as the occupying of the Washington Mall despite court injunctions and the two marches to the Arlington National Cemetery. Descriptive narrative often gives way to the more powerful messages conveyed by the expressions and actions of participants caught on film at these events. Some of the footage shot in Vietnam could be considered mildly graphic. Going Upriver was first pre-released at the Toronto International Film Festival under the "Real to Reel" documentary category on September 9 through September 18, 2004.
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 89% based on 84 reviews, and an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus states that the film contains "Interesting and revealing footage of both Kerry and the Vietnam era in general." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
