Is there such a thing as a holy war?

Rating: 9/10 (24 February 2004)

A good try by Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn is as powerful as always. The performance by Thuy Thu Le is particularly haunting, with the heart-wrenching score. The film is based on the report and the book by Daniel Lang.
There used to be six soldiers in the squad. After one of them is shot dead by the Vietcons, Sergeant Meserve (Sean Penn) leads the rest of the squad kidnapping a female villager (Thuy Thy Le) and the soldiers gang rape her, but Eriksson (Michael J. Fox) refuses to do so. He fails to help the girl to escape and eventually she is brutally murdered. Eriksson is determined to bring these men to justice but no one cares and it takes him a long way to succeed.
Even though there are righteous causes of wars, the ugliness of atrocities can be seen all the time. Women get raped by soldiers, children being slaughtered, these happen everyday in wars. 'Casualties of War' provides us an important aspect of war, and is only a tip of the iceberg.