Word: eriksson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...awful hours of their trek. The girl, who is heartbreakingly played by a delicate newcomer named Thuy Thu Le, will serve as "portable R. and R." In other words, Meserve intends that he and his men will gang-rape her. This they eventually do, with only one among them, Eriksson (Michael J. Fox), refusing to participate and trying to rescue the girl. She is murdered in a fire fight, and ultimately Eriksson, despite threats to his own life and the indifference of his commanding officers, succeeds in bringing charges against his sometime buddies. They receive, at last, stern punishment from...
...surface realism notwithstanding, this movie must be read symbolically, especially since it is presented as a dream that overtakes Eriksson years later, when he encounters a young Oriental woman on a train who reminds him of the long-ago victim. In the dream, Meserve -- arrogant, competent, headlong (in short, a born American leader) -- is an archetype of the worst in the national character. Eriksson -- frail-looking but articulate and morally alert -- is the beleaguered best. The remainder of the unit is, of course, the hulking, muddled majority, all too willing to be conned by anyone who seems to be sure...
...script, by playwright David Rabe (Streamers, Hurlyburly), introduces some complexities into this schematic story. Eriksson owes his life to Meserve's military skills. The sergeant, who is not presented as a psychopath, and the other men are in a furor because a buddy has been killed in an ambush at a supposedly pacified village. Eriksson has an interesting speech in which he argues that the standard rationale for bad wartime behavior ("We might at any second be blown away") is exactly wrong. It is precisely because soldiers live inches from death that they should be "extra careful about what...