Casualties of War (1989)

Casualties of War (1989) is one of the best war (anti-war) films and still does not have the recognition it deserves.  I wrote the dvd review in 2006, twenty years ago, updated it now and in English...

the Romanian version is here !

1966. An incident in Vietnam... the story of a repeated rape and a murder that could have been prevented, but which no one even wishes to punish—only to ignore. Casualties of War, a war regarded in America as synonymous with the loss of innocence, in which the heroes of the two World Wars became the villains and the executioners.

1987. After his first incredible mainstream success with The Untouchables, Brian De Palma, propelled onto the list of directors most coveted by the studios, could make whatever film he wanted. And he chose a controversial, repugnant, revolting subject, one that was later vehemently denied by almost everyone, especially Vietnam veterans. A real, infamous case that he had dreamed of bringing to the screen since 1969, when he saw at the Berlin Film Festival a film on the same subject, inspired by Daniel Lang's New York Times article. At the same time, one of his favourite films is The Bridge on the River Kwai, and De Palma decides to become David Lean for a little while (hence the key sequence on the bridge).

Filmed in Thailand under extremely harsh conditions, with an A-list cast of young actors on the rise (Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn, John Leguizamo, John C. Reilly), Casualties of War was released in 1989, only to be torn apart by critics, who found it exploitative and visceral, and almost completely ignored by audiences who had grown weary of Vietnam. Constructed as one vast flashback (and nightmare at the same time), it contains De Palma's overwhelming visual style and his recurring obsessions: guilt, the betrayal of comradeship, impossible love, impotence, passive voyeurism. But this time, instead of Brian De Palma's much-discussed Hitchcockian thriller fantasies, the events unfolding on screen are based on a true story. The viewer becomes complicit in the carnage, and the unsettling feeling of guilt gradually, methodically, almost paroxysmally takes hold. Ennio Morricone's score (following his previous collaboration on The Untouchables), punctuated by Gheorghe Zamfir's pan flute, is the film's principal source of emotion—elegiac, mournful, evocative of ghosts from the past and shattered dreams.

2006. The film America could not bear to watch, one of the most anti-war films ever made, is today being reassessed and regarded as equal to, or even greater than, its predecessors: The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket. And the victim of the war behind the screen continued to develop his recurring themes, concealed within his much-discussed Hitchcockian thriller fantasies, without ever again disturbing his fellow citizens' civic conscience with stories based on real events.

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Extra: the extended edition (also the first one to reach Romania) includes six additional minutes of footage (material previously available only as deleted scenes—Eriksson's interrogation, an additional scene with Dale Dye, and an unexpected Greg Henry cameo), an emotional interview with Michael J. Fox, and a half-hour Making Of in which De Palma is far warmer and more talkative than usual—and if you're wondering why, it simply means you haven't seen the film.

4 Stars out of 5 - 8 out of 10 !

Alin Ludu Dumbravă

Victime de război / Casualties of War (1989)

Victime de război / Casualties of War (1989) e unul din cele mai bine filme de război (anti-război), rămas pînă azi nedescoperit  de publicul larg. Nicio nominalizare la Oscar, eșe cde public și considerat anti-american (!) la vreame premierei. Ăn 2006 am scris o cronică la apariția Dvd ului pe piața românească. 20 de ani ami tîrziu o veți aici. Cine nu l-a văzut, să îl vadă, și cine l-a văzut să îl re-vadă !

cronica în engleză aici

1966. Un incident în Vietnam... povestea unui viol repetat și al unei crime care putea fi împiedicată, dar care nici măcar nu se dorește a fi pedepsită, ci doar ignorată. Pierderi în vreme de război, un război considerat în America sinonimul pierderii inocenței, în care eroii din cele două războaie mondiale au devenit personajul negativ și torționar.
1967. După primul său incredibil succes mainstream cu Incoruptibilii, Brian De Palma, propulsat pe lista de regizori preferați de studiouri, putea să facă ce film vroia. Și a ales un subiect controversat, repugnant, revoltător, ulterior negat cu vehemență de către toată lumea, mai ales de veteranii din Vietnam. Un caz real, infam, pe care visa să-l pună pe ecran din 1969, atunci când a văzut la Festivalul de la Berlin un film cu același subiect, inspirat din articolul din New York Times al lui Daniel Lang. Totodată, unul din filmele preferate ale sale este Podul de pe râul Kwai și De Palma se hotărăște să devină pentru puțin timp David Lean (de unde și secvența-cheie de pe pod).

Filmat în Thailanda în condiții extrem de dure, cu o echipă de actori de A, tineri și în ascensiune (Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn, John Leguizamo, John C. Reilly), Casualties of War a ieșit pe ecrane în 1989, fiind desființat de criticii care l-au găsit exploatativ și visceral și ignorat total de spectatorii care se săturaseră de Vietnam. Construit ca un imens flashback (și coșmar deopotrivă), conține stilul vizual copleșitor al lui De Palma și temele sale fetiș: vinovăția, trădarea camaraderiei, idila imposibilă, impotența, voyerismul pasiv. Dar de data asta, în loc de mult comentatele fantasme de tip thriller hitchcockian ale lui BDP, evenimentele de pe ecran sunt bazate pe o poveste reală. Spectatorul are cotă de participare la carnagiu și sentimentul de neplăcut, de culpabilitate se instaurează treptat, gradat, paroxistic. Muzica lui Ennio Morricone (după colaborarea anterioară la Incoruptibilii), punctată de naiul lui Gheorghe Zamfir, este sursa principală a emoției, elegiacă, tristă, evocatoare de prezențe de fantome trecute și vise năruite.

2006. Filmul pe care America n-a suportat să-l vadă, unul din cele mai anti-războinice din câte s-au făcut, e reconsiderat astăzi și considerat mai bun sau egal cu predecesoarele sale, Vânătorul de cerbi, Apocalypse Now, Plutonul, Full Metal Jacket. Iar victima războiului din spatele ecranului a continuat să-și dezvolte temele recurente, disimulate în mult comentatele fantasme de tip thriller hitchcockian, fără a mai deranja conștiința civică a conaționalilor cu povești bazate pe fapte reale.

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Extras: ediția extinsă (și prima, de altfel, care ajunge la noi) are incluse 6 minute în plus de film (ceea ce anterior apăruse ca scene tăiate – anchetarea lui Eriksson, o scenă în plus cu Dale Dye și un cameo inedit Greg Henry), un interviu emoționant cu Michael J. Fox și un Making Of de jumătate de oră în care De Palma e mult mai cald și volubil decât de obicei și, dacă vă întrebați de ce, înseamnă că nu ați văzut filmul.

Alin Ludu Dumbravă

4 stele din 5, 8 din 10 !!!

Sleeping Dogs (1977)

Sleeping Dogs is Sam Neill's 1st leading part and the first New Zeeland film (!), even though it was directed by an Australian, Roger Donaldson. Both went to Hollywood and had great careers-Donaldson still works. These might be reasons why this film is known today, and it shalll  get even more attention because it's maybe more relevant today than it was 39  years ago. It was a huge hit in new Zeeland ehen it came out,  thier first film shot on 35 mm. Donaldson also produced and edited, and Ian Mune who plays Bullen also co-wrote it. It's based on the book, Smith's Dream by Karl Stead, a dystopian thriller that mixes 1984 with a sort of First Blood like man on the run.

The finale improves the film much, it has a slow development, weird pace, sheer brutality and violence, constructed not like a regular action drama, with that weird style of all Australian New Wave films.

Sam Neill is great a Smith, a cluless man that just wants to be left alone and it's mistaken for a guerilla leader. 

Warren Oates shows up for a brief subplot, playing the American soldier, it his classic Warren Oates way. 

 3 1/2 out of 5, 7 out of 10 !

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

The Boys from Brazil was first a book by Ira Levin (The Stepford Wives, Rosemary's Baby), published in 1976. Great page-turner thriller, very risque, mixing real characters with preposterous fiction !

1978, ITC-producer Sir Lew Grade makes the movie adaptation.

The great Franklin J. Schaffner directs. And he gets an 11 Mill. $ budget and a Grade (sic) A cast.

Gregory Peck is Joseph Mengele, playing totally against type, his only Villain in his filmography. His take on Mengele is fierce, mean spirited and dead serious. He man is evil, the Doctor is mad. But Peck plays it straight and dresses sharply, in white suits, with a stilleto moustache. It's definitely one of the top performances of his amazing career.

Peck said afterwards, "I felt, Laurence Olivier felt, friends of mine like Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon felt, that I was good in this part. Some critics seem unwilling to accept actors when they break what they think is the mold or the image.”

A frail Laurence Olivier (who just had his kidney stones removed!) is Ezra Liberman, the nazi hunter modelled after Simon Wiesenthal.  Olivier's physicality helps him tremendously fot the part, you can feel his pain and suffering. Both Peck and Olivier deliver really copious accents. Olivier was nominated for an Oscar for best actor, one of the film's three Oscar nods (editing and music too).

James Mason supports as colonel Seibert, as do a bunch of great actors known from war and spy films, 

Walter Gottel (general Gogol in the Moore Bond films), Wolfgang Preiss, Michael Gough, Bruno Ganz, Denholm Elliott, most interesting is young Steve Guttenberg playing a Jewish young journalist who discovers the Praguayan Nazi plot. Lily Palmer, Uta Hagen and Anne Meara have small but important parts and the young boy, Jeremy Black as the uncanny blue-eyed adolescent with multiple incarnations. 

The plot itself it's so far out, it's great. And it's played so serious and grave, also it's very avant garde re Cloning, the Macguffin of the film.

Jerry Goldsmith  delivers another great score for Schaffner, they colllaborated on seven films. This one is based half on an Austrian waltz, half on Martial menacing music.

Cinematography in 1.85.1 by Henri Decae, legendary & over versatile French DOP (Bob le flammbeur, Les 400 coups, Le Clan des siciliens, Le Cercle Rouge, Day for Night, Le Professionel), in one of the few English language films he ever did (together with The Light at the Edge of the World, Bobby Deerfield, Two People, Operation Daybreak,  The Island and Exposed).  

Locations are Brazil, Paraguay, London, Austria (Vienna), Germany, Sweden and the US. The production went to Portugal instead and the principal unit never set foot in the USA. 

The opening is great, mysterious, after the majestic music turns into menacing sounds, and the opening credits are on black, there is no dialogue for the first 16 minutes.

I must've seen this film every decade of my life, 1st time in 1981-82 on Communist Romanian television when I was in the 6th or &th grade, impromptu and incognito, on a Sunday night, presented as "film artistic", on the the QT. We were so impressed the next day in school, the ones who saw it, by a sheer mistake, as the film was totally smuggled that night, one of those -push it in films-mainly when comrade Ceausescu was visiting abroad. Thanks again whoever put that on that night. A few years later, in high school I got upon the book, in French ! Started to clumsily translate it, I think I got done the 1st chapter, then of course gave up. The book might've been transalted in Romanian after 1990, I don't know.

One big find was the ITC DVD I got in the early 2000's, wasn't a great copy but still...And last time I watched it in 2020, in the pandemic, catching up with Schaffner's Lionheart and Sphynx. 

There were many different versions, the film was cut over 20 minutes for TV from the original 2h05 running time and many cuts didn't have the original ending with Jeremy Black in the photo dark room, which adds value to the concept. It also empathies the role of the braclet of animal claws that Mengele brought with him from Brazil, a small detail and metaphor addes to the subtext.

Now they are reamaking the book (and film) into a 5 episodes miniseries for Netflix that will probably stream next year. Peter Morgan is the showrunenr and Jeremy Strong is the nazi hunter. August Diehl plays Mengele but it shall be no longer Mengele, they renamed him, after his exceptional turn of the charcter in thw recent The Dissapaerence of Joseph Mengele, in which the Ira Levin novel and the film are mentioned !

  

4 out of 5 / 8 out of 10 !

Maligned on his opening time, criticised and satirised as the "nazi revival" genre was tiring (The Odessa Filre, Marathon Man, later on The Formula) the film stands tall the test of time, anchored in the two key performances, the clash between two old men, obsessed, a lot of psychology that was brought by Peck and Olivier, happy to work together for one time only, the markings of the a great director, the music and atmosphere. 

****

Best review I found about the making of and the motivations of Scahaffner, Peck taking part in it, the choice of the filming format and locations here.