FOR a film that teams Michael J Fox and Sean Penn, Casualties Of War (World, 9.35pm) is not half as bad as you might have reason to expect. It falls apart during the final reel, but for most of the time is hypnotic and perversely gripping.
Director Brian De Palma was lucky enough to be handed his material on a plate. Casualties Of War is based on a famous article in New Yorker magazine by Daniel Lang, in which he detailed atrocities against Vietnamese women by American marines.
In turning it into a film, De Palma joined the ranks of Stanley Kubrick, Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola in bringing his personal vision to bear on the conflict.
The film focuses on one patrol, led by latent psychotic Sean Penn, and its inhumane treatment of a young Vietnamese girl (Thuy Thu Le). Penn and Thu Le get top acting honours, but Fox, as the voice of reason, is not bad at all, despite his diminutive nature and usual penchant for comedy.
The problem he faces is that De Palma is caught up in the dramatic situations involved in the Penn-Thu Le conflict leaving Fox to flounder around the edges as best as he can.
If Fox looked a little more angry it might help. Here he is, caught up in the terrors of a war gone wrong, lost in the jungle with the Grim Reaper not far behind, and he still comes across as so clean-cut he cannot be human.
IN Dogfight (Pearl, 9.30pm) the late River Phoenix has more of the Vietnam blank-face about him, and he has not even been there yet. Phoenix is a Marine known as Birdlace who is in San Francisco on his way to the war when he gets caught up in a cruel wager among friends to see who can bring the ugliest date to a farewell party. He chooses Lily Taylor (a superb performance) who is clearly not ugly, but is made to look so when they first meet.