Produced in conjunction with Vietnam's state-owned Feature Film Studio Number One, the film featured the images of the Vietnam war before 1975 on the real locations where the war took place.

The film is based on real events, focusing on the lives of three young nurses, one of whom undertakes a treacherous journey up the Mekong River to Cambodia to save a very young Vietnamese-American girl before her life is destroyed during the American bombing of Cambodia.

The title “21 And A Wakeup” has three meanings: A major event transforms nurse Caitlin Murphy when she has but three weeks left in the country; The average age of Nurses in Vietnam, who woke up to the horror of a conflict they could never have imagined, and The 21 years America was involved in Vietnam, from 1954 to 1975, waking up to the first war the US ever lost.