10 War Films That Broke All The Rules

10. Casualties of War

Starting out with the strong stuff, 1989's Casualties of War is a rare American war drama which breaks a cardinal, unspoken rule of the genre which even Apocalypse Now's Francis Ford Coppola and Full Metal Jacket's Stanley Kubrick didn't explicitly broach.

Although there is one, lone morally upright American character horrified by the actions of his heartless colleagues, the film depicts American soldiers not as clueless kids drafted into a war they weren't ready for, nor as plucky heroes fighting for what's right.

Centring around the true story of a squad of US soldiers who kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered an innocent Vietnamese civilian "to boost morale", this movie, along with De Palma's later 2007 film Redacted, portrays these soldiers as the unambiguously amoral villains of their story.

A war film which refuses to centre the soldier as its hero and audience insertion persona, the film instead forces the viewer to empathize with the Vietnamese and question America's presence in the country as embodied by Sean Penn's extraordinary, hypnotically horrifying turn as the squad's Sergeant.