Very intense.

Rating: 8/10 (8 January 2008)

A very powerful story of a unique bravery in the time of war. Usually we see the generic sentimental tales of a group of men banding together, becoming brothers and struggling to make it through a brutal war together. This is a much darker story of a moralistic man doing whatever it takes, no matter what the dangerous cost, in order to give four horrible men the proper punishment. De Palma does a very good job of showing the true side of war, where men go mad, without having to show us the descent of insanity when the men return home. We see the true horror and disgusting nature of soldiers at war, and 'brotherly comradery' shown in films like Saving Private Ryan takes a much darker, disgusting turn for the troop in this one. I must say that the ending was a wonderfully symbolic moment that I hadn't expected from such a hard-hitting straight forward drama. We see the inner pain of seeing something so horrible as kidnapping, rape and murder by men who are supposed to be fighting the good fight, taken in the form of a dream. A dream that takes place on a train, just like where the abducted Vietnamese girl was shot down right before Eriksson's eyes. He makes constant eye contact with a woman, and gets off the train to speak to her. Played by the same actress who portrayed the rape victim, she lets him know that his nightmare is over now. He brought the criminals to justice, put them in prison, and now he deserves to wake up. He did the right thing and, in a saved form of the victim, he becomes aware that his conscience his clear and he can move on with his life. A beautiful ending to a very gut-wrenching film.
The performances from the two leads make and break this feature. Sean Penn is on fire in one of the best works of his career. His portrayal of the supposed courageous hero who turns into the leader of a despicable crime is top-notch. The performance is extremely intense and makes the audience terribly afraid for Eriksson. Michael J. Fox was insanely miscast for this kind of a film. After Back to the Future, it only made sense for him to try and escape the nice-guy routine but the unfortunate part is that's the only kind of character that Fox fits in to. He just...doesn't work here, and that's all there is to it. Another aspect of the film that I wasn't too fond of was it's habit of being a tad overly sentimental at times. There are a few scenes where Fox is delivering a righteous monologue about doing the morally right thing, and Ennio Morricone's score (which is a little too sentimental, as always) is really pouring on the attempt to bring the tears flowing, that the film just becomes far too sappy and overly preachy for me to enjoy it. Fortunately this only happens a couple of times, and the rest of the film more than makes up for it.