Casualties of War

Another of the movies that I had the chance to record thanks to one of the DirecTV free preview weekends was Casualties of War. It's going to be on again, overnight tonight at 2:30 AM (which might be very early tomorrow depending upon your perspective) on Epix, so recently I watched it to do a review on it here.

Michael J. Fox, best known for his sitcoms but doing drama here, plays Max Eriksson, taking a commuter train in August 1974 in the movie's opening (we know this because of the headlines stating that Richard Nixon is going to announce his resignation on TV that evening). Eriksson sees a Vietnamese-American woman who looks extremely familiar, and starts to have a flashback....

Eriksson was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War, an experience that proved traumatic for many of the people who served, if they even made it out alive. Eriksson's platoon is out on patrol when the ground above a Viet Cong tunnel gives way above him, forcing his commander, Sgt. Meserve (Sean Penn) to save his life. Eventually, the platoon members who are uninjured, Eriksson and Meserve, along with Pvt. Hatcher (John C. Reilly) and Cpl. Clark (Don Harvey), make it back to base, where Pvt. Diaz (John Leguizamo) is assigned to their outfit to replace a man who was injured and ultimately died.

The platoon wants to go out for a night on the town during their two days' leave, but the town is now off-limits. So Meserve announces to the platoon that on their next mission, they're going to "requisition" a Vietnamese girl, something that obviously troubles Eriksson, although everybody else takes it as a joke. And to be fair, in war zones and other dark times, it's easy to develop an extremely dark and cynical sense of humor. Heaven knows there are places I frequent where that's become the norm during the coronavirus panic.

It turns out, however, that Meserve isn't joking. On the next patrol, they stop in a village where they find a young woman named Oahn (Thuy Thu Le, who of course was also playing the young woman on the train in the opening scene). Meserve kidnaps her and takes her with the rest of the platoon to wherever it is they're supposed to set up shop, where the plan is that all of the men are going to rape her.

Eriksson is definitely not up for it, and protests, while Diaz isn't so sure that he wants to be involved in such a war crime, either. Thankfully, he's got Eriksson to back him up. But Meserve and the other two men in the platoon are going to gang rape her, and they're in the majority. And a sergent like Meserve is able to put a significant amount of pressure on a young private like Diaz fresh out in the field, leading Diaz to crack and join the other three soldiers. Eriksson thinks of going AWOL to return the young woman to her home, but there's the problem of desertion, and then the Viet Cong attack.

After the whole operation, Eriksson tells one of his friends not in the platoon about what happened, who suggests going to their commander above the sergeant, Lt. Reilly (Ving Rhames). Reilly makes it clear that going public with it isn't going to do much since the other four will all be freed pretty darn quickly, which is a sad fact of life but a fact it is. At least he can split the platoon up. This doesn't stop Eriksson, at least not until a Captain, even further up the chain of command, also shoots down Eriksson's idea of going public. Thankfully a chaplain has a different view of things, leading to a court-martial.

Casualties of War is based on a real incident, although the names of most of the people involved were changed. Fox does surprisingly well for a drama, while Penn and Don Harvey are also quite good as the two main bad guys. Leguizamo gets an auspicious start to his career. One problem I did have with the movie, however, is that there's a short coda after the flashback, and that came across to me as rather unrealistic dialog.

That one flaw aside, however, Casualties of War is definitely a film that is worth watching.