Buffalo Soldiers

[BlueYoshi]

[color=teal][center]"War is hell... but peace is ******* boring."[/center]

Despite having owned this film for months now, I finally had the chance to watch it yesterday. The premise is conceptually unique, though I have no idea if the military is taken to the limits that Buffalo Soldiers displays. Obviously not the [spoiler]stoned tank operators...[/spoiler] but you know.

Basically, Ray Elwood is your typical derelict; after getting caught stealing a car, he's given the choice by the Judge to spend either six months in prison, or serve three years in the army. In the hope of fulfilling his boredom, he willingly chose he army.

Set in a US army base in Germany, Elwood, accompanied by friends who he met inside, get into all sorts of trouble. I saw this as a slightly different twist to most films that contemplates army life, it's obviously a little more extreme than Stripes, but it just comes to show how charming manipulative people can be, no matter where they are.

Besides the latter, the plot [i]is[/i] a cliché. With the story revolving around drugs and practically anything that can be sold in the black market, I feel that the setting--an army base--is just a front to distract viewers from seeing the reality of it, even if some events that led to the film's outcome could have only been pulled off because of it.

Buffalo Soldiers isn't you ordinary drug-retail film regardless of it being a cliché, that's for sure. It's eccentric view on what may actually occur in the military enlighten us with a combination of a hint of black-comedy and the repetition of certain known military aspects, particularly the mediocre structure of it--the simplicity of it is really the fruit of its success, I think.[/color]

[Gavin]

[COLOR=Black][SIZE=1][FONT=Verdana]An interesting film to be sure, I did enjoy Buffalo Soldiers the first few times I saw it. Joaquin Pheonix really brought his character to life in a likable way which must have been a difficult job to do considering the character of the man he had to play. There were parts in the film which were particularly funny [spoiler]The MPs getting high from not eating enough while they made the heroin was damn funny[/spoiler]. I can see why many Americans would dislike this film due the the light it might portray the army in though I doubt that such actions are mimiced by their real life counter-parts on a regular basis. I'd recommend this film to anyway stuck in the house for a night with nothing really to do or who likes comedies that are a little different to the norm.[/FONT] [/SIZE] [/COLOR]