Friday, August 8, 2014

August 8 - Casualties of War

Today’s movie is a war film with a scene that happens on August 8. Watch this film tonight and enjoy.  

CASUALTIES OF WAR                 
       
On August 8, 1974 [00:43 to 2:22] Max Eriksson is riding the bus in San Francisco when he sees a young Vietnamese girl, which causes him to flash back to an incident during the Vietnam War. During a VC attack Eriksson falls into a tunnel, but is rescued by Sergeant Tony Meserve. The squad relaxes in a village until there is a VC attack and one man is killed. The squad’s leave is cut short and they are sent out on patrol. Meserve, over Eriksson’s objections kidnaps a young Vietnamese girl, Than to be the squad’s sex slave. She is beaten and raped by all the men except Eriksson. During an attack on a VC supply depot, Than is stabbed by Diaz, but she still tries to escape. Eriksson tries to save her, but she is killed by the rest of the squad. Back at base Eriksson reports what happened, but his superiors try to cover it up. Clark tries to kill Eriksson but eventually a chaplain who hears the story gets an investigation launched.  After a court-martial Meserve, Clark, Hatcher and Diaz are convicted.  Eriksson comes out of his reverie and leaves the bus to return her scarf, which she dropped, to the girl. [1:43:50 to 1:47:07]

This is a good movie. Both Fox as the honorable Eriksson and Penn as the crazy Meserve give good performances. The action sequences are very well done.

At 1:47 we see a newspaper with the headline “Nixon resigning” meaning it is the day before he did resign, as per Nixon: A Life by Jonathan Aitken (Regney Press, Washington, 1993) at page 521.

Producer - Art Linson

Director - Brian De Palma

Screenplay - David Rabe

Runtime -  1 hour 53 minutes
     
Released - August 18, 1989

Starring –

Michael J. Fox as Private Max Eriksson
Sean Penn as Sergeant Tony Meserve
John C. Reilly as Private Herbert Hatcher
Dale Dye as Captain Hill
Don Patrick Harvey as Corporal Thomas E. Clark
John Leguizamo as Private Antonio Diaz
Thuy Thu Le as Oanh
Erik King as Specialist 4th Class "Brownie" Brown
Ving Rhames as Lieutenant Reilly
Dan Martin as Hawthorne      

Copyright by Ivan Walters in 2014.






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