Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Another Brian De Palma movie, another bludgeoning. Or stabbing. Or body-drilling. Whatever -- as long as the victim's a woman. In "Casualties of War," the savaged female this time is a Vietnamese village girl dragged along for "portable R&R" by American GIs, then raped repeatedly, stabbed and shot.

I have to agree with the other reviewers who asked : "How could this movie have possibly been made?". This piece of absolute trash really says a lot for the many brave American soldiers (men and women) who faithfully served our country throughout the Viet Nam war. The story centers on the rape and eventual murder of an innocent Vietnamese child by 4 American soldiers who were refused leave. Who in their right mind would want to make a movie like this? The performances are just awful and totally unrealistic. Sean Penn is his usual unconvincingly terrible and casting Michael J Foxx in a war film is about as convincing as casting Stan Laurel in the lead role of Rocky ! I just fail to see how portraying American GIs as low-life rapists and murderers serves as quality entertainment. Very unconvincing acting, an awful plot, and totally off-center directing make this film the very bottom of the heap for me. One I would never recommend nor want to see again. Very disturbing junk. DePalma was really out of his element on this one and should have been court-martial-ed for this movie. It makes our Viet Nam GIs look like the Russian soldiers who served under Stalin during World War 2.

Just yesterday morning, AMC (that's American Movie Classics) ran an infomercial offering "more sex, less stress." That was followed by two Three Stooges shorts, then a heavily redacted version of CASUALTIES OF WAR. I'd seen the movie way back when, but I'd dismissed it as just another of Brian DePalmer's overblown would-be epics (like the vastly overrated SCARFACE, which features Al Pacino's worst-ever over-the-top performance). Because I'm not a video gamer, I have no idea if the first-person shooter games, set in a variety of war zones, feature any of the more True-to-Life perks that actual War provides- perks like Rape and Indiscriminate Murder. Certainly any video game set during The Vietnam War would have to feature such bonuses. As Nick Turse points out in his exhaustive study of The American War, KILL ANYTHING THAT MOVES, "atrocities were committed by members of EVERY infantry, cavalry and airborne division... That is, every major army unit in Vietnam." "Soldiers realized that small groups of civilians could be killed with impunity and logged as enemy war dead..." One medical officer listed a civilian's cause of death as "running from U.$. forces." And it was none other than Douglas MacArthur who set the tone for the war by telling General William Westmoreland: "You might have to employ a scorched earth policy in Vietnam." The U.$. released 30 BILLION pounds of munitions in Vietnam (and by the early 70s, there were 20 million bomb craters) and 70 Million liters of herbal agents- most notably Agent orange (which Turse refers to rightly as "ECOCIDE"). This was the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima bombs... "Detained civilians and captured guerrillas were often used as human mine detectors and regularly died in the process." The Biggest crime of all, called Operation Speedy Express, was, according to concerned soldier George Lewis, "... a My Lai each month for over a year." The International Commission of Enquiry Into U.$. Crimes in Indochina concluded: "... The main burden of responsibility must lie with those who have been making this policy." Said Kissinger: "Once we've broken the war in Vietnam, no one will give a damn about war crimes." As Huynh Thi Nay (whose son was murdered) said when she spoke about it: "It became dark as night." Maybe gamers could get extra points for Civilian deaths- or bonus points for Rape (unless they get caught, which might entail a loss of turn or something)...

This is heart breaking to watch. Because it is so brutal and Sean Penn is so evil here, while MJ Fox so .. MJ Fox.And if you read about the details, the original story in the paper, the real sentences, the journalist and what he stood for all his career, all the more heart breaking.I think DePalma got a lot of slack for this. His 2 movies that opens the 80s --> Blow out and closing it --> this one are similarly in ending, however so that one is based on a true story the other not.This is what you get when a great technician with great material with great actors. It just clicks like clockworks. Every scene is a show stopper, every expression is intensified, every action perilous and full of scruples.