If you are not American you should give this film a miss. It has nothing to say to anyone who has not got Vietnam in his country's historyIt is a flash back film of a court martial and the events which precipitated it. Caine Mutiny it isn't and even that had its defects. A French Nun is trotted out as an end of film dea ex machina to give an true account of what really happenedBad behaviour and scape goating is the name of the game and anyone who is not American will gape with disbelief at the indiscipline of conscripts in the seventies. A viewer will ask "they didn't do that, did they?" and then wonder why it is portrayed in fictionThe main character's soliloquy at the end is said to make up or sum up the ethos of the film - but to foreign ears it just sounds like an apology for war crimes, on the level of 'oops my finger slipped so that's OK'Any European should give this film a miss

Don Johnson has a certain presence that makes him watchable in most of his projects. It's a sort of a gravitas combined with the cool alpha southern guy. He does not possess a huge range, as evidenced by this performance and most others, but in the final courtroom scene, he gives a fine emotional yet understated performance.I was convinced that this was going to be another movie depicting American soldiers as sadistic, maniacal murderers and rapists. It basically was, but Johnson's speech at the end balances things out with an interesting and original use of logic.He admits that his fellow soldiers did something terrible, but suggests that their acts were crimes of passion during an otherwise honorable period of service and subsequent honorable lifetimes.The only way the movie can exist is if we don't get to hear Johnson's account of the key event in Vietnam until the end of the movie. Everything hinged on this suspense. Therefore he awkwardly refuses to tell his own wife and kid what happened, and we don't hear him tell his own lawyer.One reviewer already mentioned that the key witness, a French nun, became black over the 30 year period since the war. She was a missionary, but perhaps we are supposed to assume that she went through a skin pigmentation darkening process. Michael Jackson was a missionary too.I usually love Jeanne Tripplehorn, but she was wooden in this one. I usually love John Heard too. I guess he was OK, but I really didn't get a feel for who the hell he was.More importantly, I still don't understand why the soldiers massacred everyone. I guess Johnson's speech about temporary insanity explains it. They were distraught over the deaths of their fellow soldiers and suspicious of everyone, they were fatigued, and they just lost it.There is one born again Christian in the adult version of the platoon whom we see when they reunite in D.C. But it would have been nice to see Don Johnson's character consult with a clergyman.Also, as one other reviewer cleverly mentioned, I saw no evidence that the Johnson character's marriage was so sacred. He tells his lawyer that his wife and kid are everything to him, but it seems like his wife is just a sexy blonde with whom he has a lukewarm relationship.This picture is slow, has low budget production values, is filled with clichés, and makes little sense. The Vietnam sequences are totally unrealistic and clichéd too. One soldier even says, "Don't die on me man," while he holds his bloodied friend. I've never heard that one before.Stay away from this stinker, unless you are a Johnson fan, or just have a penchant for anything to do with Vietnam. It includes Arliss Howard, a pleasing actor from the 80s as well.

At least, as far as I'm concerned. *Some spoilers ahead.* Jesse Johnson was nicely cast as flashback-Tyson. Not only for his resemblance to Daddy Don! But, also, the sincerely promising potential he showed, as an actor, in general. What's more, I just loved the way they maintained the mystery behind older Tyson's silence, right up until the end. Whether they deserved it or not, he thought of his ex-platoon mates before himself. A feeling they obviously didn't think had to be mutual (the b******s)! In short, this is a five-star movie that does NOT make me regret missing certain portions of "Picking Up & Dropping Off," against which this was counter-programmed.

This is much more a man's movie with all the flashbacks of an episode in the Vietnam War. Don Johnson does an excellent job in the lead role and his son the same as a younger version of him. This should get his son many more offers of roles. I enjoyed it perhaps because of a chance to see once more the talent of Don Johnson in a good role. He has aged well since Nash Bridges. Good war remembrance movie, reminding us again how this war affected those involved, so many of them very young at the time.