Casualties of War

Some of the signature themes De Palma played with in “Body Double” — a man’s inability to save a woman’s life, the tragedy of seeing but not really seeing — achieve their fullest, darkest expression in this devastating Vietnam War drama, which feels like nothing he’s done before or since.

I’ve never been much of a De Palma fan, but it would be silly to deny that Casualties of War shows his talents, such as they are, at their near best—disregarding for the moment what he does with them. Several years ago, Jean-Luc Godard praised him for his “work on the image,” which I was somewhat dubious about at the time, but this work is plainly evident here in the thoughtfulness of his deep-focus, wide-screen framing, particularly unorthodox uses of the right and left edges of the frame.