Carol Nelson

The game of Russian roulette serves as a powerful metaphor for the very nature of war. Some return apparently unscathed some return missing limbs some return missing their sanity and some never return at all. Like gambling it is 'the luck of the draw'. The movie is carefully constructed to illustrate this point. It begins with a wedding which doubles up as a send-off party for the three young men who are leaving the following morning for the war in Vietnam, and ends with a funeral for the one out of the three who dies there. Skittish viewers should stay away as the violent scenes between the three friends are long and disturbing, even tending towards the sensational, As a viewer, if you can overlook the rather "James Bond image of Robert De Niro's character and the sketchy portrayal of the other two (we have no idea how they ended up where they did), together with the one-sided view of the Vietnamese this movie is definitely worth a look,