Review of Casualties of War (1989) by Jonathan Rosenbaum for Chicago Reader — 31 Oct 2003

The results are obviously sincere and relatively serious for De Palma (with a fresh handling of wide-screen composition that plays on some of the moral conflicts and ambiguities), but the entire film is predicated on a fairly unquestioning acceptance of the morality of the U.

S. involvement in Vietnam—the issue of whether the highly principled hero enlisted or was drafted isn't even brought up—as well as a refusal to link this war with other U.S. involvements in the third world.

So the feeling of helplessness that the film honors and provokes amounts to a moral cop-out rather than a genuine confrontation with what the war meant and continues to mean.