Fox adequate, Penn great

Rating: 6/10 (5 December 2000)

CONTAINS SPOILERS: Well, I suppose this film was meant to provide Michael J. Fox his dramatic acting bona fides. I guess it achieved that, he did pretty well. Sean Penn really chewed the scenery here to good effect. The problem with this film seems to be in the script. The beginning and ending sequences on the train detracted from the movie. Also Fox's character got a little too philosophical and pontificating. Good performance by Thuy Thu Le. The rape scene was painful to watch, as always. Murder is so commonplace in movies that it has become simply a plot device, having no shock value. Brutal rape scenes do carry that shock. I certainly hope that they do not become so common that they lose the power to shock. The theme is found in the title, and every character could be classified as a casualty of war. Most obviously the innocent Vietnamese girl, raped and murdered. Also Eriksson (Fox) will never be the same. And then Meserve (Penn) and the other squad members serving lengthy terms in a military prison, can be thought of as casualties, that their lives may not have been utterly ruined had they stayed civilians, or not been in combat. Particularly Diaz, (John Leguizamo) who didn't really want to be a moral zero, but went along under, I guess, peer pressure. Severe peer pressure, to be sure, but obviously nothing can justify rape and murder. A tough thing, war.