Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Casualties of War Blu-ray Movie Review

Into the Vietnam Nightmare—De Palma Style

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson August 15, 2021

Casualties of War (1989) is being released exclusively as part of Mill Creek Entertainment's two-disc, Scars of War: Vietnam 4-Movie Collection.

Casualties of War raises trembling and troubling issues about the way ethics and morality get severely compromised in the malaise of war. Vietnam veteran David Rabe's screenplay is based on an article by journalist Daniel Lang that originally ran in The New Yorker in the fall of 1969. It was later published as a hardcover book and reissued in paperback by Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books thirty years later to coincide with Columbia Pictures' release of the eponymous film. (I'm a proud owner of both editions. The Pocket carries the thematically appropriate image of a Bronze Star Medal with blood dripping down.) The book and adaptation is based on what's known as Incident on Hill 192 in which a group of American soldiers abducted and raped a young Vietnamese villager. Three of the GIs support and participate in the kidnapping while PFC Antonio Diaz (John Leguizamo) is initially noncommittal and PFC Eriksson (Michael J. Fox) is totally against it. De Palma doesn't simplify the characters' choices or place their actions on a dual binary that would be construed as too Machiavellian.

In an interview with Samuel Blumenfeld and Laurent Vachaud, De Palma has called Sgt. Tony Meserve (Sean Penn) a "father figure" to Eriksson and the other squad members. While Meserve looks even younger than some members of his unit, he has the same kind of machismo and brute force as Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin) in Full Metal Jacket (1986). Meserve will do seemingly anything to protect his comrades from harm's way. For instance, in an extraordinarily choreographed sequence, Eriksson gets his legs trapped beneath an underground tunnel populated by Viet Cong dwellers. Unbeknownst to Eriksson, a VC is crawling towards his legs with a knife ready to slice them. Meserve pulls the Private out to safety and takes care of the armed VC.

US soldiers find themselves embroiled in a moral quagmire in a faraway jungle.

While he despises the VC and communists, Meserve is more than racially tolerant, as evidenced by the tight relationship he shares with his best friend, the black soldier "Brownie" (Erik King). Following an evening firefight, Meserve, Brownie, and the rest of the platoon enjoy a bright sunny day around a Vietnamese community of huts. The atmosphere is highly relaxed as Eriksson shares a Hershey's Bar with a group of kids. He goes and plays with the water buffaloes. Meserve's squad seems surrounded by farmers and peasants who are outwardly innocent. It's a sneak attack here that wounds Brownie and triggers Meserve to kidnap Oanh (Thuy Thu Le). Meserve's men are practically off-duty during the ambush. Rabe and De Palma obfuscate if any of the Vietnamese civilians are aiding and abetting the VC. While Meserve is indeed more than a little nuts, he loses any trust he once had in any "neutral" villagers. The historical Meserve may have been a monster, but as played by Penn, he's far from just a warped soldier who takes pride and patriotism in killing the NVA and VC. One should pay close attention to his testimony at the court-martial.

Casualties of War was first made independently in West-Germany by Michael Verhoeven (Paul's older brother by five days) as the ironically titled O.K. (1970). It follows the same story line as the De Palma film but is filmed in black and white and has a distinctive Brechtian style. The actors introduce themselves in front of the camera during a prologue and Verhoeven inserts title cards in between scenes. Elia Kazan made an unofficial "sequel" to that movie two years later titled The Visitors. In his feature film debut, James Woods plays the role that Fox would later play seventeen years later. He's staying with his wife and son in his father-in-law's (Hal Holbrook) winter cottage. (This was essentially a home movie for Elia and his son Chris, who wrote the original screenplay, since it was filmed in their Connecticut cottage.) Sgt. Mike Nickerson (Steve Railsback) and Tony Rodriguez (Chico Martínez) get out of the stockade and drive to the cottage to pay the Woods character a visit. Railsback and Martinez portray the same characters that Penn and Leguizamo would go on to play.

Note: David Rabe returned to Vietnam in his writing with Girl by the Road at Night: A Novel of Vietnam (2010). It has some of the same themes as Casualties but I was somewhat disappointed when I first read it. I plan to give it another read.

Casualties of War Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mill Creek's MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 of the theatrical cut of Casualties of War, which is split with Birdy on the other layer, is sourced from Sony's pressed Blu-ray release, which my colleague Marty Liebman reviewed three years ago. This is also the same master used for the UK "Premium Edition" and some of the other European Blu-rays, including the German release. Video transfers of the film have mostly looked true to De Palma and cinematographer Stephen H. Burum's vision. A Film Comment article from the January/February 1993 issue notes that Burum apparently worked with Allen Daviau and Lou Levinson on the film-to-video transfer. The source print has always looked clean in the no-less-than four DVD and Blu-ray transfers that I've watched on different displays. Mill Creek has encoded this feature at an average video bitrate of 24088 kbps. Screenshots 1-5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, & 39 = Mill Creek Entertainment 2021 Blu-ray
Screenshots 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, & 38 = Sony Pictures 2017 UK Premium Collection Blu-ray

Mill Creek has provided fourteen scene selections for the 113-minute feature.

Casualties of War Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mill Creek supplies a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround remix (1932 kbps, 24-bit) as the sole sound track. I've always been able to hear the English dialogue very clearly on prior releases and this track doesn't disappoint. The 5.1 nicely picks up the soldiers wading through the brush and thicket of the Vietnamese jungle. (The picture was shot in Thailand.) I also could hear the soldiers' hands on the magazines of their M-16s. The satellite channels perform a sufficient job of rendering gunfire and explosions.

Fifty-one minutes of Ennio Morricone's music appears in the film and not a note is wasted. The Orchestra and Chorus of Unione Musicisti di Roma perform magnificently, as do Trencito de los Andes on panpipes. Morricone uses an elegiac string melody as his theme and variations throughout the score. The Italian maestro wrote for three instrumental groups during the memorable and suspenseful underground tunnel sequence. He blends the chorus with violins (at their highest pitch) for an emotionally shattering piece that concludes the film.

Optional English SDH accompany the feature.

Casualties of War Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no extras. "The Making of Casualties of War" (31:21, 480i) and Eriksson's War: A Conversation with Michael J. Fox (18:44, 480i) have reappeared on physical media since they debuted in 2001 on Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment's DVD. But they're not found here.

Casualties of War Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Casualties of War is a great masterpiece from De Palma and the auteur's second best film behind Blow Out (1981). Unlike Sony's 2018 MOD release, this is a true BD-50 and also has 24-bit audio, which the UK and DE BDs lack. If you want the Extended Cut, then you'll need to seek out Koch Media's release. The movie earns my HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION while this Mill Creek disc receives a SOLID RECOMMENDATION.