Fox and Sean Penn and is based on the events of the 1966 incident on Hill 192 during the Vietnam War, in which a Vietnamese woman was kidnapped from her village, raped, and murdered by a squad of American soldiers.
While guarding the platoon's flank, Eriksson falls as the top of a VC tunnel gives way beneath him.
While relaxing and joking around, one of Meserve's friends, Specialist 4 "Brownie" Brown, is killed when the Viet Cong ambushes them.
Eriksson strenuously objects, but Meserve, Corporal Thomas E. Clark, and Private First Class Herbert Hatcher ignore him.
As the squad treks through the mountains, Dìaz begins to reconsider kidnapping Tran and begs Eriksson to back him up.
The squad and Tran eventually take refuge in an abandoned hooch, where Eriksson is confronted and threatened by Meserve, Clark, and Hatcher.
At daybreak, Eriksson is ordered to guard Tran while the rest of the squad takes up a position near a railroad bridge overlooking a Viet Cong river supply depot.
Before Dìaz can kill her, Eriksson fires his rifle into the air, exposing them to the nearby Viet Cong.
Eriksson watches helplessly as the entire squad shoots Tran numerous times until she falls off the bridge to her death.
At the end of the film, Eriksson wakens from a nightmare to find himself on a J-Church transit line in San Francisco, just a few seats from a Vietnamese-American student who resembles Tran.
The film was based on the real-life incident on Hill 192, and on Daniel Lang's lengthy New Yorker article, "Casualties of War," published in October 1969 and released as a book, with the same title, a month later.
In 1979 David Rabe mentioned the project to Brian De Palma, who was interested but was unable to raise the money to finance it.
De Palma then went on to make The Untouchables which was a big hit; Dawn Steel had liked the project at Paramount, and when she became head of production at Columbia Pictures, Casualties of War was the first film she green-lit.
John Leguizamo, who appeared in his first major film role, again starred with Penn in another picture by De Palma, 1993's Carlito's Way.
This film marked Reilly's screen debut; he worked with Penn again in We're No Angels, State of Grace and The Thin Red Line.
"[20] Vincent Canby of The New York Times stated, "'Casualties of War' moves toward its climax so inevitably and surely that the courts-martial, which are the film's penultimate sequence, are no less riveting for the theatrical way in which they have been compressed."
He also called Penn's performance "extremely fine" and wrote of Fox that he "remains firmly in character" in a "difficult" role.
[3] Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote, "A powerful metaphor of the national shame that was America's orgy of destruction in Vietnam, Brian DePalma's film is flawed by some punch-pulling but is sure to rouse strong audience interest, even if the Columbia release will be a bitter pill for many.
"[21] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four and called it "a major effort in a minor key because of the limitations of the simple story.
"[22] Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Casualties of War is DePalma's 19th movie and easily his best.
"[23] Hal Hinson of The Washington Post praised it as "a film of great emotional power" and "one of the most punishing, morally complex movies about men at war ever made.