Tom Hardy and Bill Skarsgard lead the all-star cast for the Vietnam War drama The Things They Carried. Published in 1990, the short story collection The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien followed a platoon of soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The book went on to sell over 2 million copies and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
Movies set in the Vietnam War of course were considered box office poison for many years, until the mid-1980s when films like Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill and especially Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winner Platoon opened the floodgates on filmmakers addressing the controversial conflict. Earlier this year, Spike Lee tackled the war in his own unique way in Da 5 Bloods, which followed a group of former soldiers as they returned to Vietnam seeking to bury their demons and find a stash of lost gold. By and large however, Vietnam continues to be a neglected war when it comes to Hollywood depiction, as the industry seems much more comfortable celebrating World War 2 rather than tackling the moral ambiguities inherent in the later conflict, which claimed the lives of over 58,000 American soldiers.
But there is at least one high-profile Vietnam project upcoming as The Things They Carried is set to become a movie from director Rupert Sanders and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Scott B. Smith. The ensemble cast already assembled for the film is impressive to say the least, headed up by Hardy and Skarsgard, with Hardy also on board as one of the producers (via Deadline). The cast also includes Tye Sheridan, Stephan James, Pete Davidson, Ashton Sanders, Martin Sensmeier, Moises Arias and Angus Cloud.
Hardy of course is no stranger to playing men of violence, after his performances in everything from Mad Max: Fury Road to The Dark Knight Rises to the series Taboo. Hardy also has experience in combat-related films after his (largely masked) performance as a fighter pilot in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, as well as early appearances in Black Hawk Down and Band of Brothers. Skarsgard obviously has experience with horror of a different sort, having played Pennywise the killer clown in the two IT movies. Sheridan meanwhile is best known for his performance as Cyclops in the X-Men movies, while long-time SNL cast member Davidson is coming off an acclaimed performance in Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island.
The all-star cast for The Things They Carried is indeed reminiscent of the ensemble Stone assembled for his 1986 masterwork Platoon, which boasted such names as Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Johnny Depp, Charlie Sheen, Forest Whitaker and Tony Todd. It remains to be seen if the new film will have the same impact Stone’s did when it became a surprise box office hit while winning four Oscars including Best Picture, but the source material is no doubt powerful, and the cast for The Things They Carried is definitely talented enough to bring that material to searing life on the screen.
Source: Deadline