OK here’s a concept: let’s do a film based around the horrific My Lai Four massacre, when up to 500 unarmed civilians were slaughtered by rogue American soldiers in the Vietnam war. Fine, good idea, it hasn’t really been dealt with, although Casualties of War and Platoon touch on the subject. OK, who shall we get to make it? What about the same team between Bruno Mattei’s Island of the Living Dead and Zombies: the Beginning, they must have the gravitas and intellectual nous to tackle such a weighty subject!
Needless to say, this has the same glaring, slightly hallucinogenic look of those films, stars the same bunch of actors and features some appalling CGI helicopters and explosions. If you have happy memories of 1980s Philipines Vietnam flicks (the ones that clogged up video shelves in the second half of the decade) then it might have some nostalgic value, but director Paolo Bertola makes Cirio Santiago look like a confirmed genius. Underneath it all, there’s a good film struggling to get out – this was allegedly based on Seymour Hersh’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel – but as made by this bunch of goons it never had a chance.
