The Big Picture

Quentin Tarantino considers Brian De Palma’s
Casualties of War
the greatest film about the Vietnam War.
De Palma’s film directly influenced a scene in Tarantino’s
Reservoir Dogs
.

Casualties of War
was a tough sell for audiences due to its dark subject, but the war drama has endured as one of De Palma’s most powerful films.

Like all great filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino was an avid fan of the medium long before he established himself as one of his generation’s powerhouse entertainers. Possessing an encyclopedic and passionate knowledge of cinematic history, the wunderkind auteur has never been shy about expressing outspoken endorsements–and candid denouncements–of particular films and filmmakers. Among the filmmakers he has most frequently championed is Brian De Palma, making it no coincidence that the director’s 1981 Blow Out ranks among Tarantino’s all-time favorite films. However, Blow Out isn’t the only entry in De Palma’s decades-long body of work that Tarantino has showered with such flattering praise.

Roughly a decade after The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now were released to major acclaim, a surge of like-minded films about the Vietnam War hit theaters. From Platoon to Hamburger Hill and Full Metal Jacket to Born on the Fourth of July, Hollywood’s reckoning with the devastating conflict shed sobering light on the harrowing experiences endured by soldiers and civilians alike, and Brian De Palma threw his hat into the ring with Casualties of War. Bleak, haunting, and showcasing unforgettable performances by leads Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn, the 1989 drama is, according to Tarantino, “the greatest film about the Vietnam War.”

Casualties of War (1989) During the Vietnam War, a soldier finds himself the outsider of his own squad when they unnecessarily kidnap a female villager.Release Date August 18, 1989 Runtime 113 Minutes

What Is ‘Casualties of War’ About?
Based on a real incident that took place in 1966, Casualties of War recounts a heinous crime committed by a squad of American troops during the Vietnam War. After one of his friends (Erik King) is killed in action, Sergeant Meserve (Sean Penn) is assigned to lead PFC Eriksson (Michael J. Fox), Corporal Clark (Don Patrick Harvey), PFC Hatcher (John C. Reilly), and PFC Diaz (John Leguizamo) on a long-range reconnaissance patrol into the country’s Central Highlands. Before embarking, however, Meserve tells the men of his plan to abduct and take along a young local girl (Thuy Thu Le) for “portable R&R.” Eriksson, though defiant of his peers and refusing to participate in their atrocity, is helpless to defend the girl as she meets a tragic fate at the hands of her captors, but his subsequent integrity leads to an investigation resulting in the court-martial and conviction of his fellow soldiers.

Marking a departure for Brian De Palma–who was, for years, familiar with the true story behind Casualties of War thanks to journalist Daniel Lang’s 1969 article in The New Yorker–the film allowed him to take a more mature and meaningful approach to storytelling than he was previously known for. Foregoing the visually stylish and arguably gratuitous tendencies characterizing many of his earlier films in favor of a brutally authentic take on real-world violence and tragedy, De Palma presented audiences with a microcosmic glimpse into the bleak consequences of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and what can happen when individual moral integrity gives way to groupthink. Casualties of War may not be as well-known or renowned compared to contemporaries like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, but its reputation has endured thanks in no small part to bravura filmmaking, powerful performances, and Quentin Tarantino’s enthusiastic endorsement.

‘Casualties of War’ Influenced a Scene in ‘Reservoir Dogs’
Image via Miramax Films

It’s perfectly evident that Brian De Palma ranks highly among the filmmakers who’ve most influenced Quentin Tarantino’s body of work. From moments of cathartic violence to kinetic camerawork to the use of split-screen photography, many of De Palma’s stylistic trademarks can frequently be seen in the younger filmmaker’s visual sensibilities. Tarantino has said that De Palma “really showed me what you could do with cinema” and hailed him as “the greatest director of his generation.” It should hardly come as a surprise, then, that a scene in Casualties of War informed how Tarantino would approach a like-minded scene in his directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs.

Related 10 Classic Movies That Most Directly Inspired The Works of Quentin Tarantino “You reference me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.”

Speaking about the influence De Palma’s film had on his own, Tarantino revealed that “there’s a scene in here – it happens towards the beginning of the movie – where Sean Penn’s character’s best friend is shot, and he’s taking care of him. I really used it when I was doing Reservoir Dogs, not copying it frame by frame or anything but just when I was writing the script emotionally.” Specifically, Tarantino is referring to back-to-back scenes in Reservoir Dogs that see Mr. White’s (Harvey Keitel) attempts to console Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) after he’s shot in the stomach. Though Casualties of War and Reservoir Dogs are wildly divergent in terms of narrative, genre, and tone, the former’s influence on the latter can be clearly felt even for the briefest and most subtle of moments, serving as merely one of many references Tarantino has made to De Palma.

Quentin Tarantino and Violence in Cinema
Image via TWC

Tarantino has not been shy about showcasing violence in his films over the years, but he has become increasingly reticent to discuss this process in interviews. Since violence and gore are so frequently featured in his films, interviewers have been consistent in asking him about this choice. Tarantino rarely misses an opportunity to mention that, for him, showcasing violence in film is one way to demonstrate his love of filmmaking. The techniques that go into creating violence and its aftermath on film must work seamlessly together for it to feel realistic enough to create a reaction in the audience. Tarantino unabashedly borrowing from De Palma’s commitment to authenticity in Casualties of War for the scene in Reservoir Dogs is just one more instance where he can demonstrate this love and knowledge of film history.

In a 2013 interview, British journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy pressed Tarantino to discuss any connection there might be between real world violence and the violence shown in his films. An irritated Tarantino refused to answer the question, commenting that he rejected the premise that cinematic violence contributes to violence in the real world. He even told Guru-Murthy that he is not a “monkey” that will dance to this tune. When pressed further, Tarantino continued by saying that people can Google what he has said about this topic, since he has already mentioned everything he intends to say about it during his 20 years in film.

In a January 2013 article for The Atlantic, journalist Esther Zuckerman did exactly that. Tarantino has always maintained that the filmmaker’s responsibility is to the characters they are bringing to the screen. They are not responsible for any influence on the audience that may or may not come from scenes that are violent or gory. He draws a firm line between real world violence and cinematic violence, referring to the framing of violence in cinema as somehow problematic as a “moral panic.” He has also said many times that watching violence in cinema does not make a person more accepting of violence in real life, maintaining that instances of real life violence remain abhorrent, regardless of how they are portrayed in film.

‘Casualties of War’s Dark Subject Made It a Tough Sell for Audiences

With a prolific, decades-long career that includes revered hits like Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible, Casualties of War may not immediately spring to mind as one of Brian De Palma’s top-tier efforts. Hitting theaters at the tail end of 1989’s jam-packed summer of blockbuster crowd-pleasers, the film ultimately brought in an underwhelming $18 million against its $22.5 million budget. But despite its shortcomings at the box office, the war drama’s raw emotional impact and haunting qualities belie its initial lukewarm reception with moviegoers, and it was never lost on De Palma that Casualties of War would challenge audiences, which he made perfectly clear to The New York Times three months before the film was released.

“It’s so intense people may get up and leave,” De Palma acknowledged before a test screening in May 1989. Also in attendance at the fateful screening was producer Art Linson, Columbia Pictures executive Dawn Steel, and De Palma’s longtime friend and colleague, Steven Spielberg. By the film’s end, as predicted, several moviegoers had vacated the theater, and those who remained sat in stunned silence. According to The New York Times, Spielberg perfectly summarized the film’s power when he quipped to another audience member, “You’ll be thinking about this for a week.” Considering De Palma’s knack for playing audiences like a fiddle, such a response by some viewers was likely inevitable, but Casualties of War allowed him to exercise those cinematic skills in service of a substantive story imbued with reverence and humanity.

Casualties of War is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

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