John Peel famously said that Italian War Films are "Always different, always the same", and Brothers In War is just that. Usually you have a bunch of soldiers either stuck behind enemy lines or deliberately going behind enemy lines on some mission (like Five for Hell, Thunders Squad, War Bus, etc) and in Brothers In War we do have a bunch of folk behind enemy lines, only this time only two of them are soldiers, and one of them is the biggest jerk in the world. The other two is a stripper and her manager who seem rather surprised when the VC attack the camp they are performing at and waste loads of GIs.
Two soldiers are given the task of escorting the stripper and her manager to a safer environment, but the problem is they are really really bad at it. Not only do they get lost, but two of them fall into a pit trap and the jerk guy, who is constantly ignoring everyone's cries for help even when under fire, takes the opportunity to rape the stripper and run of into the jungle.
So that leaves three to carry on our strange war movie. After much wandering about, I started to get the feeling that the budget for this particular film may have been low even by late eighties Italian film standards, but things pick near the end after some characters get captured and the stripper gets raped about three or four hundred times (plus one consensual moment with our hero while hip deep in a punji cage, through the bars, with a dead guy nearby – romantic! This is after them singing jingle bells to drown out the screams of other prisoners). We eventually get full blown jungle war standards including exploding bamboo huts! Loads of Filipino actors falling over! Err
more exploding huts! Although too rape orientated for my taste it's still something you're going to want to see, provided you actually get the urge to watch late eighties Italian war movies at all. Definitely a strange one, like a four character play where the characters periodically blow the crap out of a bunch of bad guys.
Nice freeze frame ending. What would I do without them?
