Casualties of War (1989)
Synopsis
Casualties of War is an American war crime drama directed by Brian De Palma and
starring Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn. The screenplay by David Rabe is based on
the Incident on Hill 192 during the Vietnam War: the 1966 kidnapping, gang rape,
and murder of a Viet nam ese woman by four American soldiers, who were subse-
quently court- martialed and convicted, based on the damning testimony of the fifth
member of the squad who refused to participate.
Background
On 18–19 November 1966, during the Vietnam War, four members of Charlie
Com pany, 2nd Battalion (Airborne), 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Divi-
sion, kidnapped a 21- year- old Viet nam ese woman named Phan Thi Mao, gang-
raped her, and then murdered her. Pfc. Robert M. Storeby, the fifth member of
the squad, refused to participate. Despite threats to his own life, Storeby reported
the atrocity to superiors and ultimately testified against his brothers- in- arms,
which resulted in their being court- martialed, dishonorably discharged, and receiv-
ing prison terms from eight years to life in prison. What became known as the
“Incident on Hill 192” gained notoriety after journalist Daniel Lang published an
exhaustive 29,000- word account entitled “Casualties of War” in The New Yorker
(18 October 1969), subsequently published as a slim paperback with the same title.
West German filmmaker Michael Verhoeven’s 79- minute Brechtian docudrama
based on the incident (and rather cryptically entitled O.K.) appeared the following
year. (When it was listed for competition at the 1970 Berlin Film Festival, the
jury president, American director George Stevens, resigned after failing to have
the film excluded as anti- American. In the ensuing row, the entire jury resigned
without bestowing any prizes.) Also in 1970, producer David Susskind bought the
film rights for Warner Bros. The studio hired Jack Clayton to direct and journalist
Pete Hamill to write a script but Hamill’s script was rejected, and the film did not
materialize. In 1979, when Susskind tried to revive the proj ect for ABC- TV—
again without success— playwright David Rabe mentioned it to Brian De Palma,
who had read Lang’s Ne w Yorker article a de cade earlier and had been haunted by
it. De Palma wanted to make the picture but could not secure studio backing. By
1985 Rabe had written a new script, and Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn had signed
on as actors— almost enough impetus to attract financing from Paramount but not
quite. After the resounding box office success of Vietnam War films— Coming Home