Duncan's hands, it is, at least most of the time, effective and believable, a new sort of cinema verite, producing the illusion of being within the patrol, sharing its danger, its battle-hardened jokes, its young man's obscenity, even its awareness of the camera. It is a risky cinematic technique, one that could easily fall into gimmickry. He focuses on the kind of practical detail that will, presumably, be useful to soldiers just arriving, like burying chewing-gum wrappers so enemy scouts won't see them, and learning to spot booby-trap trip wires in the dense underbrush. '84 Charlie Mopic,' which opens today at the Carnegie Hall Cinema, consists of film taken by a military cameraman as he follows a six-man patrol on a jungle reconnaissance mission in Vietnam, interviewing the soldiers and filming them in action from his shoulder-held camera. The device he hit on was to mimic the making of an Army documentary. Charlie Duncan, the Vietnam veteran who wrote and directed '84 Charlie Mopic,' has said he wanted to make an intimate portrayal of war, to show what really happens to young men in battle.
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