Tragic and haunting

Rating: 8/10 (29 January 2001)

While not as good a Vietnam movie as Platoon or Apocalypse Now, Casualties of War nevertheless delivers the emotional punch through DePalma's depiction of how war can truly bring out the worst in people. Similar in content to the village massacre scene of Platoon, Casualties actually hits home with greater force the horrific conduct and depravity of how low these GIs had been morally reduced to. You almost cringe at certain scenes such as Corporal Clark's callous crooning of The Door's "Hello, I love you" while escorting their victim on the march. By being able to fully empathize with Erikson, we feel appauled and helpless as we witness his uncontrolable situation, and can't but help feel a bitter satisfaction when he lays into one of the soldiers with a shovel back at base camp. I felt angry and depressed at how any human being could act the way these soldiers did, and was haunted long after the movie's conclusion. Based on a true story, we realize the true tragedy of what has occurred at the movie's end, when Erikson returns to the present from his flashback and the girl suggets that he had had a "bad dream". The painful reality is that it wasn't just a dream, anymore than the whole Vietnam War was. DePalma examines in great depth not just the ethics concerning warfare, but the values of right and wrong & good and evil, which every single one of us on this planet faces. Just as in Platoon with Charlie Sheen's concluding helicopter voiceover, and Saving Private Ryan's portrayal of the aged Ryan asking his wife "have I been a good man, have I led a good life?", Casualties of War highlights a similar concept when Erikson states that one should never abandon their sense of morality-to cease caring- just because they are surrounded by the possibility of death. Overall you are left with a harrowing feeling that is akin to the likes of having watched Schindler's List or The Killing Fields.