HBO is 'Taking Chance'

"When you see a body count coming up, it doesn't really hit home in the same kind of way as it does if you actually see what happens to the actual remains — you see the preparation, you see the respect, and you see the tradition and the honor that is involved with actually returning them to their final resting place," he said. "And the story is really a very, very simple one. … It's almost completely unembellished with anything to make it more cinematic or dramatic or to somehow force us to feel one way or another based on what our preconceived notions are about Iraq and whether or not we should have been in there or whatever.

"It's just the simple telling of what this process is like and, in its simplicity, I think, becomes an extremely profound kind of comment on the casualties of war."

THREE MARINES: Kevin Bacon plays a Marine in "Taking Chance"; he plays a different Marine in the current theatrical release "Frost/Nixon." (He portrays Maj. Jack Brennan, a military aide to Richard Nixon who became Nixon's post-resignation chief of staff.)

But it's a coincidence, not a trend.

"Well, I guess I've played three Marines — (in) 'A Few Good Men,' 'Frost/Nixon' and 'Taking Chance,' " Bacon said, pointing out that after all the movies he's done, it's no different than having coincidentally played three cops or three killers.

"The one thing I will say is that there is no part of me that ever considered being a Marine (or) could make it in the Marine Corps. I am definitely not that guy," he said. "I'm not the guy to throw myself in harm's way. I would never make it through boot camp.

"It's all acting."

E-mail: pierce@desnews.com

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