Buffalo Soldiers film review

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BUFFALO SOLDIERS

After going A.W.O.L in post-production purgatory for nearly 2 and a half years, Gregor Jordan's military satire has finally made it onto the big screen. Unable to find an American distributor in the wake of September 11, the subsequent collapse of Filmfour its British distributor meant its future was nothing short of uncertain. In a year populated by standard Hollywood fare and disappointments Buffalo Soldiers has demonstrated that it was clearly worth the wait.

Set on a US base in West Germany during 1989 before the fall of the Berlin Wall it is reminiscent of the filmic traditions of M*A*S*H and Catch 22. Joaquin Phoenix's battalion secretary Ray Elwood - Radar O'Reilly's evil twin - can find a market for anything from industrial strength floor cleaner to refined heroin. Unfortunately, Elwood's pampered existence comes to an abrupt halt with the arrival of Sgt. Robert Lee, a grizzled and suitably menacing Scott Glenn who is determined to root out the incipient corruption on the base starting with Elwood. Ed Harris is superb as the inept, bumbling and eminently loveable battalion commander who is blissfully unaware of the state of the men under his command and is wrapped up in a battle of one-up-man-ship with his counterpart Col. Marshall. Anna Paquin is disappointing as Robyn Lee, Sgt. Lee's daughter and Elwood's love interest. Her character is not as sharply delineated as the others and she seems to have spent most of her time sampling the various narcotics that pervade the base.

Buffalo Soldiers is a caustic depiction of the military during peacetime and is best summed up by the Nietzsche quotation from the screenplay: "When there is peace, the warlike man attacks himself". Ultimately, the film is an examination of how human beings who are trained to fight and deal with combat situations can breakdown during peacetime through sheer boredom. At the time that the film is set not only was the Berlin Wall about to fall but the Cold War was ending and there was no real need for these troops to be there. While the army featured here is American, this could be any army in any part of the world.

Overall, intelligent, charming and thoughtful filmmaking that doesn't shirk from making its audience laugh out loud and more importantly is actually entertaining.

Saba Shah