MovieChat Forums > Casualties of War (1989) Discussion > WERE THEY WRONG?

WERE THEY WRONG?

posted 17 years ago by hyperjack1183
81 replies | jump to latest

I talked to people about this and i suprisingly got a lotta mixed opinions. personally, i think these guys are sick. erickson was a stand up guy and all but the rest of them were sick and deranged, that girl was not a soldier and they acted like a bunch of pigs. it was wrong and disgusting. BUUUUT a lotta people say it was understandable. people went crazy in vietnam. they took out all the hate and agression they felt from the war out on her and made her suffer for it. theyre trained to hate and kill these people...whattyou think? and why is the guy from talladega nights in it and why does he look exactly the same lol

[–] skalin23 15 years ago

imagine if that was your daughter taken from your house, than ask that question again you moron.

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[–] Mindless_Drone 14 years ago

it is perfectly consistent to both blame the soldiers who committed the act as well as blame the military/political culture that allowed (and to a degree encouraged) those actions by: authorizing the razing of vietnamese villages; actively covering up the massacres of civilians; generally making the vietnamese a racialized Other who needed to be dominated and controlled by any means necessary; and failing to recognize and treat the effects of ptsd that many soldiers ended up suffering from (something the military STILL isn't taking seriously).

to put it in another context, it was wrong for white americans to lynch black people in the first half of the 20th century--mind-blowingly wrong. it was ALSO wrong for their parents to raise them to believe that black people were sub-human animals who could and should be lynched. blame falls upon the whole culture, both those who are personally guilty and those who, in whatever way, ennabled those acts to be carried out.

it isn't some kind of either/or situation. there was plenty of insanity to go around in vietnam. there's no reason to limit ourselves here. if we don't recognize the personal guilt, then we end up permitting atrocious acts by atrocious individuals. if we don't recognize the systemic guilt, then we end up allowing those acts to happen again. if we recognize both and work to learn from them, then we can minimize both outcomes in the future.

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] bite_me_loser_86 14 years ago

One thing that always baffled me... whenever a soldier commits an atrocity, such as what happened in this film, there are always idiots rushing to explain and excuse them, because after all they are under so much pressure. But people never seem to have that kind of sympathy for deserters. Why not? After all war is so stressful and hey, maybe some soldiers just don't want to die? Surely it's understandable that they'd desert, just like it's sooo understandable that they'd resort to kidnapping, raping and killing innocent girls.

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[–] rc-108 14 years ago

I just rewatched this movie...

the example mentioned about this happening to an American girl and how we would react...of course we would be outraged....because most of us have humanized the American girl...

the squad's problem was that they dehumanized the Vietnamese girl...she was just an object to satisfy urges...

what a well done movie...
it holds up very well.
this movie is a good mirror for us....how would we react in Erickson's shoes...
When bad things happen... do we turn and look the other way... how much courage do we have...

[–] eddysl12 14 years ago

I just rewatched this movie last night. There are casualties all around. It's not just the poor raped murdered girl who is a casualty but also Ericksson who had to rat out his buddies, guys he had fought beside and who had saved his life. Then there was his buddies/squad, guys who I got the feeling were drafted and who didn't want to be there. Since the Sargent was 20, I would assume all the others were younger than him. They were just kids who wanted to make it out alive and to them the way to do that was to be the meanest sob's in the valley. There is some validity to that thinking.

The officers and higher-level nco's may have appeared indifferent, but they were dealing daily with soldiers getting killed, having their limbs blown off, and they were just trying to minimize the damage while also hopefully winning the war. This girl was just another name on a very long list.

I think this movie highlights why war should be a last resort and not a first. There are going to be casualties in any war, war is not a pretty thing. This movie was made in 1989 which means it came out in the 1990-91 timeframe. This would have been around the time of the first Gulf War which was over so quickly and seemed so easy, no wonder this fine movie bombed at the time.

There has been some criticism about the emotionally supercharged ending and music. I think the contrast between that and the emotionless statement on the screen " Casualties of War " is simply magnificent.