Four young recruits about to be sent to Vietnam confront their prejudicial feelings toward one another when it's learned one of them is gay.
Acting
Michael Wright's Carlyle—unpredictable, magnetic, heartbreaking.
Direction
Altman's wandering camera finds cruelty in cramped corners.
Writing
Rabe's stage dialogue crackles with threat and buried longing.
Director
Robert Altman
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot in Fort Benning with actual military cooperation—then the Army saw the final cut. Oops.
David Rabe wrote the original play after his own Vietnam service; this was Altman's third Rabe adaptation and his least seen.
US
