84 CHARLIE MOPIC [AKA 84C MOPIC] 99
Plot Summary
The setting is a remote U.S. Army base in the Central Highlands, South Vietnam,
- For a training film, an 84C MoPic (Motion Picture Specialist) (Byron James)
is assigned to a squad of six soldiers about to embark on a three- day Long- Range
Reconnaissance Patrol: Sgt. “OD” O’Donigan (Richard Brooks), Lt. “LT” Drewery
( Jonathan Emerson), Pvt. “Easy” Easley (Nicholas Cascone), SPEC/4 “Pretty Boy”
Baldwin ( Jason Tomlins), SPEC/4 “Hammer” Thorpe (Christopher Burgard) and
“Cracker” (Glenn Morshower). The men board a Huey he li cop ter, are flown to a
drop- off site, disembark, and begin to move into the jungle. During a rest break
OD discovers that Easy is packing marijuana. Noting that the acrid smell of the
smoke could give away their position, OD dumps the offending substance on the
ground. The next morning Pretty Boy tells MoPic that he was mistaken for dead
after an enemy mortar round hit close by. He also tells MoPic he’s been incredibly
lucky (e.g., a bullet hit him in the helmet and merely creased his hair). In another
filmed interview Cracker tells MoPic he came from a large, poor “white trash” family
in South Carolina so he enlisted to have a career and take advantage of educational
and retirement benefits. His working- class philosophy is “Do your job,” right or
wrong, to put food on the table. Asked if he resents being led by a black man,
Cracker angrily asserts his admiration and brotherly love for OD and stops the
interview. After encountering a booby trap, they leave the trail and duck out of
sight just as an enemy patrol passes close by. Soon thereafter, the squad spots a
North Viet nam ese Army (NVA) unit of about 20 soldiers, and OD hatches a plan
to attack them. Easy interviews LT on camera; LT says he sees the army as a big
corporation where the “advancement potential is enormous.” The men set up a
booby trap on the trail with a grenade and tripwire to “out- Chuck Chuck.” The
squad discovers the NVA force they’ve been surveilling has grown overnight to
the size of a regiment. Easy gets on the radio and transmits map coordinates for
an artillery barrage and airstrike. LT declares the LRRP mission completed and
radios to arrange for a rendezvous with a he li cop ter at a nearby village. On the
way back, the squad decides to attack a small squad of enemy soldiers, killing five
of the Viet Cong, but one remains alive, instigating a heated debate. Pretty Boy
wants to finish him off, but LT wants to bring him back for interrogation; OD sides
with LT. Just then, the squad comes under heavy small arms fire. Pretty Boy is hit,
stranded in the open, and hit several more times. Hammer tries to rescue him but
is also wounded. The squad is pinned down and cannot get to Pretty Boy so OD
decides to put him out of his misery. After the skirmish ends, OD removes Pretty
Boy’s dog tags and tapes one of them into his mouth. The squad can carry back
only one body; Americans never leave their dead behind, so OD demands that LT
kill their wounded Viet Cong prisoner. LT stabs the man but does not kill him; OD
finishes the job. The squad moves out but is soon ambushed. OD takes a bullet to
the stomach but Cracker takes three rounds to the abdomen and quickly dies. OD
wraps up the corpses of Pretty Boy and Cracker and tells his surviving squad
mates that “ We’ll send a chopper back for them.” On camera, Hammer speculates
that luck migrates from one soldier to another and he now feels that he has Pretty
Boy’s luck for surviving the ambush. Overcome by dread, Easy begins to panic,
but OD promises to take care of him. As OD weakens from his wound, LT tries to