"What happens in the fields stays in the fields..."

Rating: 4/10 (10 January 2011)

Bombastic, repugnant war drama--though one with an emotionally resonant finale, for those who can stick with it. In 1966 Vietnam, a mad-dog sergeant with an axe to grind leads his four-man squad to a Vietnamese village where they kidnap an innocent girl for the purposes of using her as a sex slave; only one soldier in the troop refuses to take part in a gang-rape, and later helplessly tries to rescue the girl after she is beaten and stabbed. Ugly beyond comprehension, the film is nevertheless well-made and fairly well performed, although Michael J. Fox's maddeningly sane Eriksson tests credulity. David Rabe adapted his screenplay from Daniel Lang's non-fiction New Yorker article, which was later published in book-form, yet the dialogue is probably the picture's weakest link (it's thick with writer's ink). Brian DePalma may want to leave this genre to filmmakers like Oliver Stone...his style is occasionally in evidence, but he doesn't have his heart in this scenario, which may be why the movie is so stultified. ** from ****