Vietnam veterans Trent Matthews (Brian Edward O'Connor, a poor man's Robert Ginty) and Jim Lowery (Cameron Smith) are suffering from recurring dreams about the war; as they sleep, they battle the Vietcong in an attempt to rescue fellow soldier Johnny (Chet Hood), who they had to leave behind during their escape from a prisoner-of-war camp nine years earlier. Also haunting their nightmares is sadistic traitor McGregor (Steve Horton, overacting wildly), who wants to continue with his torture of the men.
Waking to find that injuries sustained in their dreams leave real marks on their bodies, Trent and Jim realise that they must confront their fears or die. Arming themselves to the teeth, they enter their dreams to make one last ditch effort to find Johnny and drag him into reality.
Borrowing heavily from A Nightmare on Elm Street, but with a Vietnam war film twist, Night Wars is wholly unoriginal late-'80s straight-to-video nonsense that suffers from a serious lack of logic. Now I know what you're thinking - dreams don't have to make sense - but the film needs to adhere to a few rules for it to work.
Case in point: taking weapons into the dreams. When Trent and Jim fall asleep, they do so with loaded firearms in their hands, which they fire in reality whenever they do so in their dream. In their final rescue attempt, they also lob around a fair few grenades, but conveniently fail to throw a single real grenade in the room in which they are asleep. Consistency be damned!
The film is also unclear about how Johnny and McGregor are projecting themselves into Trent and Jim's dreams. There is no suggestion that they are dead. Is it astral projection? If so, how did they learn to pull off this trick? At one point, McGregor even attacks Trent's wife as she sleeps, with no explanation about how he manages this. And are Trent and Jim astrally projecting themselves as they snooze, their spirits manifesting in Vietnam? None of it makes a lick of sense.
I will give props for the number of bloody squibs used in the shootouts - hence my generous rating of 3/10 - but there are better things you could be doing with your time.
N.B. Despite getting top billing, Dan Haggerty only has a supporting role as concerned doctor Mike Campbell.
