Casualties of War · reception & legacy
1989 · Brian De Palma
How Casualties of War has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A box-office flop in 1989 — arriving late in the post-Platoon Vietnam cycle, audiences stayed away despite Pauline Kael's famous rave — it's since been reappraised as one of De Palma's masterpieces and a fixture in 'great Vietnam War film' conversations.
What's debated
The perennial fight is over Michael J. Fox's against-type casting — is his boyish earnestness the film's moral anchor or its weak link next to Sean Penn going full throttle?
Its footprint
This is the film De Palma defenders reach for whenever someone calls him a style-over-substance Hitchcock imitator — the proof-of-sincerity exhibit in seemingly every De Palma debate, with an Ennio Morricone score fans treat as one of his most haunting.
Where it stands
A canon climber: overlooked in its day, now a consensus top-tier De Palma pick among auteurists and a 'you have to see this one' for anyone working through the Vietnam film cycle.