|
| Casualties of War |
|
  (8/10)
|
Runtime: 120 |
| Public Rating: 7.75 (12 votes) |
Director: Brian de Palma |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama/War |
Year: 1989 |
| Writer(s): Daniel Lang (book), David Rabe |
| Distributor: 1 |
| Reviewed by: Arturo García Lasca |
| |
This film is the true story of five vietnam soldiers who kidnapp an asian girl just for their personal pleasure. But that by itself could be compressed to just a couple of minutes, so the film deals with more than just that event; more important than than that is how each character is dealing with the situation, and probably director De Palma considered the atmosphere more important than everything else.
Eriksson (Michael J. Fox) is a young soldier just sent to the battlefield, where he meets Sergeant Meserve (Sean Penn) and other soldiers such as Hatcher (John C. Reilly) and Clark (Don Harvey), all with more experience than him; Meserve actually needs one more month to return home. After the vietnamese make a surprise attack and kill Meserve's best friend, a group of five people are assigned to a job, they are the four persons I've mentioned already, and a new soldier, Diaz (John Leguizamo), who will replace the deseased.
They are commanded to leave early in the morning and they'll walk for a couple of days; the night before their mission, Meserve says he wants the team to part earlier in order to have some time for kidnapping a young asian girl from a village nearby, so the men can have sex with her. At first Erkisson thought it was a joke, but it turned out Meserve was completely real about what he said, and the group start walking with a girl by their side.
Meserve, who is a bright young soldier, seems to have lost his mind and somehow managed to convince himself this is the right thing to do, that they deserve this. Diaz talks to Eriksson and they decide to support each other when the moment comes, they don't want to be part of this; But when the moment actually comes and Diaz watches Eriksson argue with the other three, he decides not to resist and participate in the raping. Meserve tries to force Eriksson, but he is determined to not let his principles vanish, so Eriksson never hurts the girl, even when it means being against the oher for men.
After being raped, sick, almost starving to death and going through a lot of pain a suffering, the girl is murdered by the soldiers, in front of Eriksson's eyes, who at one point actually thought about helping her escape. After they return home, Eriksson feels the need to tell someone about the events that occured in that mission, so he goes to Lieutenant Reilly (Ving Rhames), who doesn't help too much. He then has a confrontation with Captain Hill (Dale Dye), who warns him about the dangers and advices him to forget about it and not try to destroy the lives of for young men; Eriksson just wont listen. He manages to take the men to militar court and they are all sentenced to several years in prisson.
The film was very well made, I really like the atmosphere, although there weren't many 'fihgting' moements it always looked like a real war. Up to the point where they kill the girl the film was doing just great, but after that, when Eriksson goes through the process of surviving the four men and getting them to jail, the quality of the film decreases a bit, specially the last scenes where he's in a train and talks to an asian girl who reminds him of the victim he so hard tried to save, those scenes should have been deleted, they were pointless.
All in all, I think "Casualties of War" was a great job, the result of a simple story with complex characters and a magnificent atmosphere. This was the first time I saw Michael J. Fox playing a dramatic role, I think he was okay, but other actors could have done the job better. Penn, in the other hand, was fantastic, he really looked like a total wacko while he sweared to Eriksson for not wanting to rape the girl. I would recommend it to anyone who's up for a war film, it's a unique film among the genre.
|
 Printable Version
|
Do you agree/disagree with this review of Casualties of War? Let your opinions be heard in our forum.
|
Buy the Poster of Casualties of War (Click Here)
|
|
|
|
