Casualties of War

Eriksson (Michael J. Fox), a young american soldier, arrives in Vietnam and is assigned to a unit of men who have been in the jungle for many months. Their sergeant Tony Meserve (Sean Penn) has only one more mission to complete before he can go home, and though he has been a successful soldier, he has lost his will to fight or to care for his troop. When soldiers on duty prevent the sergeant from going to a nearby town to visit a prostitute on the night before his last mission, the enraged sergeant tells his unit that he will seek revenge. He concocts a plan where his troop will accompany him to the village, kidnap a woman and force her to come with them on the mission in order to furnish the group sexually. The newest soldier in the troop does not want to go along with the plan, but the sergeant's charisma convinces the rest of the men. When they eventually reach the village, the young man again protests, which fuels the sergeant's rage, and prompts him to initiate a brutal gang rape and murder of a young village woman. The film then moves to events after the troop's return from Vietnam, where the young soldier has decided to have his unit court martialled.