De Palma is a clever filmmaker. But as Casualties of War shows, cleverness filtered through Hollywood self-righteousness and the wrong script can turn into the worst kind of glib horseshit.

| Apr 14, 2025

Some movies... can leave us feeling simultaneously elated and wiped out. Overwhelmed, we may experience a helpless anger if we hear people mock them or poke holes in them in order to dismiss them. The new Casualties of War has this kind of purity.

| Sep 11, 2023

This is a great movie.

| May 9, 2023

A grim and sobering work.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 30, 2021

Does Vietnam have a geographical place, a national history, a culture, or a political future? Not really, for as we are reassured at the end of Brian De Palma's military slasher film, Casualties of War, Vietnam was after all only a "bad dream."

| May 19, 2020

Casualties of War is the strongest, the simplest and the most painful of all the Vietnam movies because it isn't about how terrible it is not to understand what's going on around us -- it's about the agony of seeing terrible things too clearly.

| Jan 11, 2020

Speaking to our near-masochistic desire to revisit works in the hope that we can reverse the tragic outcome, Casualties of War perhaps transcends the very label of "war film."

| Jul 20, 2016

The strong conclusion ensures that the film ends on a somewhat powerful note...

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 10, 2016

Makes us look at the mistaken Vietnam War as something that's dehumanizing.

| Original Score: B- | May 28, 2015

A typical De Palma film, disturbingly based on true events, Casualties Of War works well enough.

| Mar 16, 2015

Michael J. Fox is a revelation as the mouse that roared, whilst the score, the direction, and the rest of the cast turn a risky film into a solid addition to the Nam canon.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 16, 2015

There's a moral charge to the action, but it's also swooningly exciting, coldly scary. Every friend may be an enemy, every innocent a traitor.

| Mar 16, 2015

Top acting honors go to Penn as the sergeant and Thuy Thu Le as the captive girl.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 16, 2015

This Vietnam War saga, inspired by a true story, is among De Palma's better pictures, devoid of his usual gimmicry and cynicism.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 23, 2011

It's a fat glop of obvious screen manipulation that preserves a frightening human core, making the life and death struggle all the more shocking.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 26, 2009

A powerful metaphor of the national shame that was America's orgy of destruction in Vietnam, Brian De Palma's film deals directly with the harrowing rape and murder of a Vietnamese woman by four GIs.

| Mar 26, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 14, 2008

De Palma uses his consummate filmmaking skill to craft a reflection of his own grave sorrow about the Vietnam era.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 6, 2006

Fox is quite touching here, topped only by Sean Penn in a superb, frightening performance.

| Aug 28, 2006

Casualties of War is dull.

| Jun 24, 2006