It's understandable: trained to kill or be killed, on edge (figuratively and literally, keeping watch at the border), raw recruits can get trigger happy. The consequences aren't always easy to live with. His malleable young mind already badly molded, it's understandable when THE COAST GUARD begins a gradual but total mental meltdown. (All it takes these days is one long, thoughtful look at the geopolitical landscape to send one screaming for cover...) I grew up with a Vietnam vet; I know, from firsthand observation over a ten-year period, what killing can do to a man's mind. It ain't pretty. (And, just to enlighten you: he was leading a patrol along a trail when a Vietnamese woman and a young child appeared before them. He told the woman, in Vietnamese, to stop where she was. She came toward him and his men. He repeated his warning; she ignored him. He killed her and her kid. His men rushed forward to check the bodies and found both of them strapped with enough explosives to kill the entire platoon. When one of his men asked this sergeant how he knew the two were booby-trapped, he responded: "I didn't." I don't think he ever went another day of his life without getting totally, mind-numbingly drunk.) THE COAST GUARD is a film most definitely worth seeing.
Review of The Coast Guard
