SOURCE: Simon, John. “The Enemy Was Us.” National Review 41, no. 18 (29 September 1989): 63-4.

In the following review, Simon derides the ending of Casualties of War.

Brian De Palma, who makes films in which women are brutally murdered, and David Rabe, a Vietnam veteran who writes plays about that war, have teamed up as director and screenwriter for Casualties of War, about an American platoon in Vietnam that kidnaps, gang-rapes, and finally kills a pretty, teen-aged Vietnamese farm girl. The film is based on Daniel Lang's 1969 New Yorker article, later published as a book. This is the true story as told by Private “Sven Eriksson” (only the names have been changed), the one member of the five-man squad opposed to the rape, who tried to stop it but couldn't, tried to save the girl's life but failed, suffered terrible pangs of conscience but, against overwhelming pressure from above, managed at...