Rating: 
Summary: WHAT A BLAST
Review: i loved this movie... kinda like deliverance, but less "Squealing" if you know what i mean.... lots of great actors, great plot... all around fun... story of a group of national guardsman on a weekend exercise who run into some backwoods french-speaking hillbillies... trouble in the bayou begins for this bunch.. whats great about this, is with all the trekking thru the woods, you'll almost forget where they are and mistake this for a vietnam flick... i love it..
Rating: 
Summary: Undervalued movie
Review: In short, a bunch of National Guardsmen venture into the bayou swamps of Southern Louisiana. Whilst there, they upset the locals and find themselves hunted down one by one. Most are killed. Strange ending. End.
Rating: 
Summary: Deliverance + Blair Witch Project = Terrible, Terrible Movie
Review: It's like Deliverance because it has hillbillies hunting city boys and it's like the Blair Witch Project because all that happens is they wander around not knowing where to go and eventually get killed. The script is so poorly written that someone actually gets killed by quick sand. The music is awful; at one point it's a single note being played for ten minutes. The acting is horrendous; they're supposed to be convincing each other that they're seriously lost and need to think of a plan, but they can't even convince me that they're in the Bayou.
The film is classified as action/adventure, but all that happens is that they walk around for seventy minutes, deliver terrible dialogs, spend twenty minutes in a hillbilly hootenanny, and battle their pursuers in a confrontation that makes the stunts on Xena look like a Bruce Lee movie. There's a scene where a pig is cut open and its guts come out and say, "Look at me: I'm unpleasant, but an hour of me is still better than ten minutes of this garbage!"
If you like this movie, make sure to check out Battlefield Earth and Cut Throat Island.
Rating: 
Summary: Inept National Guardsmen
Review: It's scary to think that our nation has guys like these defending our nation in their part time. Let's just hope they've increased the admission standards a bit. The dialogue is juvenile and crude, and the actors portraying the guardsmen look 40 years old!! The movie's saving grace is the music, rugged scenery and feel, and the cajuns. Not a thinking man's movie, but still pretty fun.
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Summary: Weekend warriors stalked by Cajun hunters
Review: Nine National Guardsmen on a routine weekend training mission suddenly find themselves out of their depth when they come into conflict with a group of Cajun hunters. What begins as a misconceived practical joke (Stucky, played by character actor Lewis Smith shoots blanks at them from the boats they've "borrowed" from them to get across a flooded trail), escalates into a full blown war between the two groups. The Cajuns begin hunting the soliders who are armed only with blanks and one round of real bullets.Walter Hill's taunt direction and script (based on Michael Kane's original script and rewritten with long time collaborator David Giler)bring this backwoods Apocalypse Now to life. While it integrates elements of Delieverence, Apocalypse Now and a number of 50's b-movie aspects into its clever script, Southern Comfort is far from derivative due to the direction, photography and strong acting. Powers Boothe and Fred Ward (in an early major role)virtually steal the movie from star Keith Carradine. Boothe a surpremely talented underused performer, shines in his role as Hardin the recent Texas transplant. The cast of character actors features strong performances from Peter Coyote (in a pre-E.T. performance) and Brion James (Blade Runner)as well. The interaction of these bickering weekend warriors makes the picture come to life. The setting makes this all the more believable as many males of adult age chose the National Guard to the alternative of serving in Vietnam (the film is set in 1973). The transfer is very good. There's not a lot of analot artifacts and there's little of the compression problems that one has come to expect from budget priced DVDs. While the film is given a bare bones (it's a companion to MGM's Midnite Movie series)presentation with only foreign language tracks, subtitles and the original trailer, it is presented in its original aspect ratio. The sound is quite good as well and is true to its original stereo soundtrack. I'd highly recommend this underrated and forgotten thriller.
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Summary: A Vietnam set in Louisiana swampland
Review: Southern comfort is a great metaphor for the Vietnam War, except instead of the Viet-Cong, the enemy is some mean and nasty backwood Cajuns you would not want to run into if you were lost in the swamp. The soldiers are really a bunch of civilians thrown into an ugly situation they really want no part of, and they are impotent weekend warriors as well, as they have to fight the Cajun's powerful hunting rifles with nothing but blanks! Powers Booth, and Keith Carradine steal the show as the two soldiers with any common sense , that want to survive the situation...gory and violent, you really get into the story as their situation keeps worsening, and the plot thickens. The score by Ry Cooder is unforgettable and haunting, and listen for some down home Cajun music in the climax...will make you think twice about heading out into the bayous of Southern Louisiana....Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Paranoid? There's reason to be...
Review: Southern Comfort is one of those brilliant films that no one has heard of. The director is Walter Hill and this is one of his best films. Unfortunately, it is also one of his least well known. The film stars Peter Coyote, Powers Boothe and Keith Carradine, among others. You will see a lot of familiar faces. A group of National Guardsman are on a routine training mission in the Louisiana bayou (of course, they have just blanks). They are to go to a specified location but when they get there, there is just water. They "borrow" three canoes to continue their mission, leaving a note. As they are paddling down stream, they see the owners of the canoes on the shore. They yell to them to look at the note they left and one of the guardsman fires his machine gun filled with blanks at the crowd as a joke. The men on shore return fire (with live ammunition) and kill the ranking officer. The men get out of the canoes and into the forest as quickly as possible and soon come to realize they are being tracked by the killers. They happen upon a cajun who they just know is one of the ones who fired upon them and take him captive. As they continue through the bayou in search of the highway, they are hunted and picked off one by one. It is soon evident that the remaining ranking officer is not capable of leading them out of the wilderness alive. Eventually, only two are left and they happen upon some "nice" cajuns but trouble soon follows. It is do or die and they are in for the fight of their lives. The story is tense and exciting, the picture adequate, but the sound is substandard. If they had taken the trouble to remaster the sound in Dolby Digital, this DVD would have been simply outstanding. Look this one up, you won't regret it!
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Summary: Paranoia and Despair
Review: SOUTHERN COMFORT is one of Walter Hill's biggest disappointments. Set in the Louisiana bayous of 1973 a group of National Guardsmen tangle with local Cajuns who systematically hunt them down. I suppose this is all meant to be symbolic of America's foray into Vietnam but these Guardsmen are depicted as an undisciplined group of the most obnoxious and unsympathetic screen incarnations of stupidity I have ever seen. Screenwriters David Giler, Michael Kane and Walter Hill provide no insight into the motivations of the Guardsmen or their Cajun pursuers. Instead of being concerned about the characters from a human-interest perspective the viewer develops a prurient concern in just exactly how they will meet their demise. I ordinarily like Walter Hill's films for their sheer visual energy, which he usually backs up with an equal dose of visual character development. I think that Hill is one of our most underrated directors but SOUTHERN COMFORT looks more like an experiment into allegorical territory of political events that went terribly wrong. Oddly this film looks more akin to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and that is the only saving grace that SOUTHERN COMFORT can muster. As the Guardsmen become disoriented and lost into the bleakness of the bayous the whole film takes on an aura of paranoia, fear and despair. The images created seem like they come from the darkest regions of the psyche. Also very odd is how effectively these disturbing images were created. However, this visual aura becomes equally undone by the shallowness of the central characters as was the case with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and the viewer is left with style and no substance.
Rating:
Summary: Spike board
Review: Southern comfort star's one of the Carradine boy's, and takes place in present time as a group of "Weekend Warriors" (as Rambo put it) take their national guard selves on a trek through the Louisiana Bayou. As a training exercise they are led into the swampy marsh by a Vietnam Veteran, played by Peter Coyote (E.T., Cross Creek, Patch Adam's...). Loaded down with blank ammunition, and Marlboro Men attitude's, (as Ian Malcolm put it) they steal a few boats from some local swamp inhabitant's. As they paddle away, the owner's show up. Thinking it the smart thing to do, one of the soldiers unload's blank ammunition at them from his m-16. Of course, the rest of the movie is Louisiana Bayou resident's retaliation. I rooted for the cajun's, and liked it enough to buy it.
(Only neat theatrical trailer as Xtra)
Rating:
Summary: An underrated gem
Review: The story is simple: Nine Louisiana National Guardsmen head into the bayou for a routine training mission. They ignite a vengeful war by the Cajun inhabitants when one of them fires a round of blanks, as a practical joke, and the natives think the bullets are real. The hunters, angry at being "attacked", decide to hunt down the National Guardsmen to the very last man. And the Guards, having only a few live bullets a piece must make their way back to their base with almost no idea of knowing where they're going. What follows is a film wonderfully focused towards a single end: survival. It throbs with tension and paranoia, a reaction to the forces arrayed against our Weekend Warriors. Director Walter Hill manages to capture the same "run for you life" spirit he did with his earlier film "The Warriors". Southern Comfort is actually an allegory of the Vietnam War. Set during 1973, it seems all that was changed was the location from Southeast Asia to southern Louisiana. The films message is that invading ones homeland and stirring up trouble is not a good plan. Fine performances by Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe. The Ry Cooder soundtrack is simply haunting. It's worth mentioning that there's a VERY graphic scene of two pigs being slaughtered near the end of the flick. The DVD is presented in anamorphic widescreen, thank goodness. The DVD transfer is actually good: a marvelous job of getting the transfer looking clean and clear, sans any artifact or grain that my eye could spot. The audio does a fine mix with sound effects. By way of extras, Southern Comfort won't break any records, but for a small title, it's no surprise. You get a trailer and chapter stops. It's a good movie for a great price. Pick it up.
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