Product: Casualties of War [UMD for PSP] (1989)
Rating: 5.0
A Film To Remind Us Who We Are
As others have written with justification, this is not a movie of greatness, not a classic, neither written or acted impeccably. I concede the "close but no cigar" evaluation of previous reviewers.I do not concede that this is an overtly anti-war movie, nor that it portrays all of the military in bad light. In the special features comments by Fox, he describes the film as a "morality play". And so it is, and for that it is an excellent one.Read the plot description. Read some current newspaper stories. Perhaps this film would not have moved me so deeply if I were not reading newspapers. Truly I don't know.Several times in the course of this film, the main character says "This should not be happening." And beneath the rage and frustration of that line, do I detect an unspoken additional clause "...because we're Americans" ?Maybe I'm projecting, but as an American who understands that we are neither flawless or faultless in all of our acts, there are nonetheless standards which we collectively endevour, or should endevour, to always live up to.This is a film to see whenever any one of us, or we as a nation, enter into any sequence of events in which our fundamental morality may risk compromise. It is a film to remind us who we are.