Tuk Lai is an hour long experimental reality-style documentary about some friends playing a realistic double-blind wargame - a semi-fictional military scenario set in Vietnam.

As with all games of this type, it is simultaneously a toy soldier fantasy and an illuminating learning experience on the realities of modern military conflict. The film attempts to convey - in an unobtrusive, implicit way - the strange contradiction of wargames: their dark, heavy topic is fascinating, and suffused with tension and suspense; but it also makes them darkly humorous and "ripping good fun". (This is a paradox which holds true of depictions of war in other media as well - notably literature and film.)

The game scenario depicted and played out is set in the Central Highlands of Vietnam during 1967. An American unit has taken an abandoned French rubber tree plantation and hastily set up a patrol base. The following night Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Regulars launch a raid in force under cover of darkness.

Tuk Lai is a document about tabletop wargaming: an activity little known or practiced, but which has gone on to shape a vast number of digital wargames - such as Starcraft, Ground Control and Civilization. It is about wargaming and wargame players, strategy and even the "fog of war" itself. The fictional battle is depicted with numerous graphic animations to explain exactly what is going on. In an unexpected way, this film gives a real sense of the kind of nuts-and-bolts decisions that commanders faced in that conflict, and the kind of intrinsic uncertainty that is the rule - not the exception - of modern conflict.