Man that was brutal and cut me deep to my core. I was on edge the entire time because this is scarier than any most horror movies. The overwhelming dread and anxiety that washes over you as you contemplate how you would handle the situation if you were Michael J. Fox. Do you intervene and kill your own men to stop pure evil at the cost of your own life? It is a no win situation no matter what because you can’t live with any of the outcomes. The aftermath of the horror is just as compelling, even though you breathe a sigh of relief once you are out of the jungle, because sitting through it is just tense and horrifying. When Michael J. Fox tells that guy to go fuck himself, it feels so good because justice is on its way. The film also causes you to think about the cost of war, kidnapping and raping a girl is a terrible thing but is it okay to go into a country and kill people just because they fight you too. The reason the film works so well comes from two places: the acting and the directing. Thuy Thu Le was ROBBED of a Best Supporting Actress nomination at every award ceremony for her outstanding and honestly hard performance as the woman who is kidnapped. Michael J. Fox is the perfect casting for the role as he still has a baby face, but is great at standing up to the much bigger Sean Penn. Penn’s rage is totally on display and it works so well. It doesn’t feel like acting, it feels like he is the character and that character is fucking destroyed and rage filled to his core. There is one moment where he screams and yells at someone and it is so visceral, it can only be true desperate anger. Brian de Palma directs the film like a suspense thriller or a horror movie complete with his amazing camera work and trademark techniques. This helps to really show how dark and depraved humanity has the capacity to inflict. Ennio Morricone’s score is pretty great, although the music under the speech Fox gives after the new kid explodes on a mine is a little too sappy. That speech also feels very written and plays like someone giving the big speech for the sake of giving a momentous speech.
