Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
THE QUIET AMERICAN was considered difficult until it played Toronto to glowing reviews. Maybe the makers of BUFFALO SOLDIERS need to get it screened for more people and hope that it garners enough good buzz to overcome admittedly difficult subject matter. Check out what this spy thought of it...
Hi Harry,
Long term reader, first time etc
I saw Buffalo Soldiers at a private screening at TV station Channel 4 in London last night. Those of you in the US are unlikely to catch a glimpse of it for some time, because the distributors feel that showing the military in a less than golden glow at the moment is unpatriotic.
This is a serious point. Whatever people think of the US right now, one of the things that is almost universally admired is freedom of speech. And that doesn't seem to be happening now. You don't need a government to ban it; you just need it to create an atmosphere where companies and lobby groups have the power to restrict what you see. It's repression.
Anyway, rant over and now to the review. And before I start I should point out that I know nothing about the military so most, if not all, of the ranks, terms etc will be wrong.
Buffalo Soldiers stars Joaquin Phoenix as a lowly grunt on a US army base in Germany just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He is the assistant to the base manager Ed Harris, a nice if ineffectual soldier who is starting to dream of retirement.
Phoenix is like an evil Bilko: he runs all the scams. But these scams are not a bit of illicit gambling, they're heroin and black market arms. Everybody on the base appears to be involved in some way, either a dealer, an addict or paid to turn a blind eye.
Anyway, everything is running smoothly until the arrival of Scott Glenn, the new head of the military police. He's not prepared to tolerate Phoenix, although not necessarily for the right reasons.
So begins a battle between the two, part of which involves Phoenix starting to date Glenn's daughter, Anna Paquin. At first it's just to piss Glenn off, but he falls for her almost immediately. And that's it, that's the film.
This is a very good film with what I feel are some serious flaws. It's very funny, and the acting is great. It also has a real sense of the environment in which these people lived. It's like Three Kings in a way, but darker and without the buddy-buddy aspect.
But the core of the film is the battle between Phoenix and Glenn and both are so cnfident they are going to win that there is no real sense of tension. They both go about whatever they do right up until the end.
And there are other strands that seem to begin and end nowhere. For example there's a bit where Harris tries to win a military exercise. It starts and finishes within a couple of minutes and seems to have been stuck in for the sake of it - had it been fleshed out more, it would have been much more interesting.
I never normally think this about films, but at a little over 90 minutes, this one should have been longer.
That said, what is there is well worth seeing and I urge you to seek it out.
I don't have a pseudonym, so call me what you want so long as you don't use my real name - I've got the opportunity to go to a few more of these!
Cheers!
Thanks, man. Nice work, and I hope we get a chance to see the film and make our own minds up soon!
"Moriarty" out.
