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Summary: Exciting
Review: "Southern Comfort" is an exciting movie with plenty of talented actors. The swamps of Louisiana are beautifully filmed, and the Cajun songs are catchy. There is a lot of violence and profanity in the movie, so be prepared for that. Probably the most graphic scenes are near the end of the movie, when some pigs are shot and slaughtered. Yuk. Despite that, the last 20-25 minutes of the movie are the most suspenseful and exciting.
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Summary: Deeper than Vietnam!
Review: 'Southern Comfort' is frequently viewed as being an allegory to the Vietnam War. This is not entirely true.Although there are references to Vietnam in the film and the stock squad-of-grunts-patrolling-the-jungle motif, in reality the film touches two essential elements of the Anglo-American psyche, beliefs that are rooted all the way back in Colonial days. The first belief is in the American citizen-soldier, the 'minute-man' who (unlike mercenary professional soldiers) bears arms and submits to military discipline only because he believes in God and Country, and is willing to drop his plow and bear arms to defend his family and property. The second is the old Puritan hatred of North America's vast wilderness areas, the deep-seated idea that the dark woods must be the abode of Satan, and therefore the forests and anyone living in them is evil. So you take a squad of these good old-fashioned National Guardsmen, put them in the primeval Lousiana bayou on a training exercise and watch what develops. Although it is easy to draw parrallels with Vietnam in 'Southern Comfort,' (in fact, when I first saw it on t.v. several years ago I came in halfway and first thought it was in Vietnam), I find it is a much more disturbing film if the viewer keeps in mind that it is set in (relatively) modern day America and questions the validity of our nation's perception of itself, independent of any foriegn influences.
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Summary: Director Walter Hill in Fine Form
Review: ...Southern Comfort is... an interesting and action-packed movie from the prolific director Walter Hill. While it shares the same "city-folk vs.backwoods dwellers" theme as Deliverance, Southern Comfort is distinctive in its overall atmosphere of menace and foreboding. A group of National Guardsman on training manuevers in the Louisiana swamps are hunted down by [angry] Cajuns, and the worst part is, the weapons the Guardsman carry are loaded with blanks! The movie turns into a battle of wits and survival for the Guardsman, with civilization tantalizingly close by, but unknown danger standing in the way. I saw this movie as a kid, and I still remember it years later. I recommend this movie as a fine example of Walter Hill's lean direction and his unique eye for stylized violence, along the lines of Sam Peckinpah. It's also offered at a good price, so you can't go wrong.
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Summary: What We Have Here Is a Problem of Communication
Review: A company of semi-red neck Louisiana National Guardsmen are on weekend maneuvers in Cajun swamp land. They need to use a map to work their way out of the swamp. Leadership is weak, they bicker among themselves...and they lose the map. So they can struggle back the way they came, or steal some canoes from a Cajun fishing camp and make it easier for themselves. They make the mistake of taking the canoes. Then one of them for a joke fires blanks at a Cajun. Well, he fires back and there's one less National Guardsman.
The Cajuns, some of whom look like they might be second cousins to the backwoods guys in Deliverance, figure they'd better get them all. The National Guardsmen figure they'd better get out as fast as they can. They stick together but its pretty much every man for himself. They're in the middle of a swamp, and have to deal with quicksand, vicious dogs, bear traps, and psycho Cajuns with guns. Maybe I forgot to mention, they have almost no live ammo themselves.
Eventually only Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe make it to a small Cajun village. They think they're safe and can get help. The Cajuns are having a celebration with fiddle music and dancing and pots of gumbo. Then Carradine and Boothe notice that some of the men are among those who were after them. They make it, but barely.
This is a tight, well made movie that's engrossing. It's worth getting, with good performances by the two leads. Only thing to remember, if you've spent any time in Louisiana's small Cajun towns you'll know the people are a lot friendler than some in this movie.
Ry Cooder is down for the score. He as much as anyone was responsible for bringing the musicians of the Buena Vista Social Club to prominence and getting that movie made. Great movie, great DVD, great CD.
And for fans of Viet Nam war films, some people think this was one of the indirect anti-war movies being made around then...U.S. soldiers lost in a dangerous quagmire and being killed for misjudgements and mistakes.
At any rate, it's a good movie that's held up well. The DVD transfer is better than average.
Rating:
Summary: It's like Deliverance meets First Blood
Review: A simple 'in the midst of the video-store' review: "It's like Deliverance meets First Blood (you know, the good Rambo movie)." A cast of B-movie actors turn in fair to good performances (with the occassional scenenery chewer). Paranoia, racial tension, and class warfair come to bare. Southern Comfort is not a great movie, but it is good. For those who appreciate something a little different, a little left of normal cinema, it's well worth your time and money.
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Summary: Suspense in Suspenseful
Review: A Thriller of Classic proportions.
It puts Thrill into Thriller, Suspense in Suspenseful, Graphic into Graphical, Scare into Scary and anything else in between.
The performances from the cast (Mainly from Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe) are just so powerful it all keeps you guessing what would happen next in the film, Ry Cooder's strange music score is very rivetting (the opening theme being the standout of it all), the photography from Andrew Laszlo is serene and very tranquil capturing what the Louisiana bayous are really like and Walter Hill's directing is all straight-forward.
A film really worth watching
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Summary: Underrated Vietnam Allegory
Review: Clever, suspence filled Vietnam allegory that may be Walter Hill's finest film. Very no-frills, like John Carpenter's "The Thing" a bare bones approach to ordinary men suddenly thrust into an extraordinary situation.
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Summary: ... and not a label in sight
Review: Director Walter Hill's 1981 action drama has a horror movie mentality. When a group of weekend service members of the Louisiana National Guard venture into bayou country on training maneuvers, a misunderstanding leads to them being stalked and methodically hunted down by local Cajuns. However the screenplay which Hill co-wrote with Michael Kane and the producer David Giler, provides more depth and character interplay than something like Scream where the killings are all there is. Another definite plus is the soundtrack, where silence is employed during the attacks. This is both a superior aesthetic choice and a contextual one since the main locale is the lonely mythic swampland, stark in it's beauty and primordial terror. The fact that the attacks take place in daylight is another subversion of the horror genre, though the Cajuns function on the same level as a generic stalker, seen out of the corner of one's eye and possessing greater agility than those they hunt. Of course it helps that the swamps are the Cajun's home turf since this makes the Guardsmen more vulnerable. Hill never telegraphs the next death so that the viewer carries a constant feeling of dread. The swampland being so beautiful and the savagery of the killings also recalls the irony of the murders at Auschwitz, which was said to be gorgeous countryside. Hill perhaps overplays his Vietnam parable when he presents one man going to his death in slow motion, in an attempt to enoble someone whose leadership the others have criticised for trying to stick to the manual. But considering that the narrative is set in 1973, it is interesting to interpret the assault on the Guardsmen as anti-military, a point made when the surviving men make it to a Cajun camp, and the expected relief of civilisation turns to continued paranoia. It's not only that the Cajuns only speak French that sets them apart. Early in the film Hill overlaps a pan of the men's discussion of what to do with the vertical sight of them walking, an unusual representation of thought via editing. Sometimes these continuous discussions are disappointingly reductive, no matter how true to life they seem, but occasionally they provide a gem eg. When it is said to a black man that the Cajuns fear "niggers" as bad luck, the black man replies with "They may be right. I've been hanging around with niggers all my life and I haven't had a break yet". The line is funny, probably more so because it comes from a black man, and also prophetic. The ending is a problem. As Pauline Kael says in her review of the film in her collection Taking It All In, it brings you up short. It's too abrupt and ambiguous, but this is ultimately a trifle considering the care Hill has taken and his "dazzling competence" (Kael) we have been witness to.
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Summary: Great cast, excellent video transfer, pick it up for $10....
Review: For under $10 it's a great buy (dvdpricesearch.com). The video transfer is excellent and makes the purchase worth while. There's no extras and that's a shame and I'm sure it would have made this a must have military flick. The story is a bit unbelievable for some but it's a movie and not reality. Without great casting, setting and video transfer this movie would have been long forgotten. Otherwise, this film makes a respectable addition to any dvd collection.
Rating:
Summary: good movie
Review: I first saw this film in 1982 and I enjoyed it.The acting is good,the settings are good,the music score by Ry Cooder is superb.The cajun camp sequences are interesting..hearing their accents,watching them cut open a pigs belly.In all,a very entertaining movie to eat pizza with.
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