Buffalo Soldiers
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Movie Reviews of Buffalo Soldiers
Movie Review: A fun diversion
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie is interesting if you are stuck in the 80's like I am. It is an interesting tale of how things are not always quite the way they seem - the different personalities in the film have conflicts over the different priorities of their lives - playing one role but are doing other things that seem to against what they are doing.Movie Review: A wonderful little seen gem
Summary: 4 Stars
Buffalo Soldiers truly is one of the best war comedies ever made. It ranks right up there with M.A.S.H. and Catch-22. Like Catch-22, the film is very profound and funny at the same time. This is probably Phoenix's best performances to date. Just a solid fun film.Movie Review: uneven satire
Summary: 3 Stars
Although the opening shot of "Buffalo Soldiers" echoes the most famous image from "Dr Strangelove," the real pedigree for this military satire lies in those twin hits from 1970, "MASH" and "Catch-22." "Buffalo Soldiers" presents us with an army corps composed almost exclusively of drug users, narcotics dealers, bureaucratic bunglers and traffickers in stolen merchandise. The prime culprit is battalion secretary Ray Elwood, the opportunist supreme who knows all the angles and can make the system work to his own benefit and advantage. A criminal who was given service in the military over time in prison, Elwood has simply transferred all his illegal activities to the realm of army base life. One day, however, Elwood meets his match in the form of one Sergeant Lee (the leathery Scott Glenn), a gruff no-nonsense commander, new to this German base, who is on to Elwood's antics and is determined to make life a living hell for him."Buffalo Soldiers" is a gutsy film in that it dares to take on a sacred cow institution and paint it in an unflattering light. It is also willing to present us with a protagonist who has few, if any, redeeming qualities as a human being (though he does radiate glimmers of decency, at times, albeit not very convincing ones). These are the film's two strongest virtues, yet they are also, paradoxically, its two greatest weaknesses. Despite Joaquin Phoenix's superb, energetic performance in the role, Elwood just does not grab the viewer's sympathy in the way that, say, Hawkeye and Yossarrian do in "MASH" and "Catch-22" respectively. Those characters could be shrewdly, cynically humorous about the flaws and hypocrisy in the military establishment, yet could still value what was good in the institution itself and the grunts who made up its ranks. The problem with Elwood is that he is seen far more as the rule rather than the exception in the world scenarists Eric Weiss, Nora Maccoby and writer/director Gregor Jordan have created. The film, though it obviously has valid points to make, feels so unbalanced in its approach that it ends up weakening its own moral case. It's true that the other two films took place in a wartime setting and "Buffalo Soldiers" is set in peacetime 1989, but it still could use a bit more equity in its portrayal.
All this wouldn't matter so much if the film displayed a finer sense of humor and a firmer grasp of tone, which ranges all the way from dead seriousness to cartoon-like caricature and slapstick. There are a few deft and witty moments in the film, but they just don't come often enough to lift the comedy too far above the ordinary.
Maybe "MASH" and "Catch-22" were more acceptable as satires because they weren't targeting just the military but the human propensity for war in general. With no war operating in its background, "Buffalo Soldiers" seems to exist in a sort of satirical vacuum - making it, in the long run, a cynical exercise oddly devoid of relevance and point.
Movie Review: Very Good Acting and Characters, But Satires No Longer Bite
Summary: 3 Stars
The name of 'Buffalo Soldiers', historically speaking, originally refers to the all black soldiers during the post-Civil War period (there is a made-for-TV film starring Danny Glover of the same title). I say this not because I wanted to show my historical knowledge (sorry, I confess, I did). I say this because I still don't know why the film (or the original book) uses the name? What's the point?
This is exactly what I was thinking while watching this film. It is a satire, to be sure. I can see it when Joaquin Phoenix appears as Elwood, US soldier in Germany just before the Cold War ended, and acts like an anti-hero -- stealing, cooking cocaine, etc. I don't know whether or not his outrageous deeds are based on truths, but I know such dark comedy films as "MASH" and "Catch 22," and you don't need to be offended seeing these things on screen. Even if the tank runs like mad on the town's market, 'squishing' the cars and stalls; even if Ed Harris's Col. Berman is, good-natured as he is, hopelessly inept as an officer. Scott Glen's sardonic sergeant Lee (another reference to the Civil War?), according to his daughter Robyn (Anna Paquin), is delighted to 'kill' Elwood, just like he did in the previous war in Vietnam. And her burnt skin testifies to her words. All these elements point to one thing only.
Right, if the things went this too far, this film must be a satire. But against what? The film is about that particular time between the long Cold War and the Gulf War, the curiously 'peaceful' period when nations in the world were keeping the military balance in a precarious way. But that old time is gone forever, and we should know that now. It is Miramax who knows it best when it had to delay the release date many times.
However, for all its uniformly good acting, the film looks irrelevant now. It's about those soliders living at that time and that place. It's not 'Three Kings' whose setting is more immediate to us. It's not 'Catch 22' whose absurd situations reminded us of our equally absurd existence. And of course, the film is not about the soldiers in Iraq (if so, this could never be released).
With all respect to the film and its makers, it is truism, or cliche, to say that 'Buffalo Soldiers' is darkly funny, hilarious attack on the US military system, and so on and on. The film is not boring, but it ends there, nothing more. Aussie director Gregor Jordan made 'Ned Kelly' after this, and it also lacked a strong center or theme around which the events should be depicted. Like 'Ned' 'Buffalo Soliders' is pretty entertaining, and retains a good amount of satrical tone in it, but the target remains very vague throughout the story.
Movie Review: A movie about source and product (I prefer the source)
Summary: 3 Stars
When it comes to books-turned-into-movies, there's an eternal question: Is it better to see the movie before you read the book? Or should you read the book before you see the movie?I've always felt that reading a book can spoil a movie for a viewer, yet movies almost never ruin a good book for a reader because, well, there's just more there. And the fact is, the book is almost always better than the movie. With the exception of, maybe, "The Godfather." And, so I'm told, "The Bridges of Madison County." And "Carrie." And most of the James Bond movies. And . . .
Anyway, all this came to mind because I watched "Buffalo Soldiers," a movie based on Robert O'Connor's novel. Joaquin Phoenix plays Ray Elwood, an Army specialist who's running drugs and black-market goods through his base in West Germany in the late '80s, about the time the Berlin Wall comes down. With the Cold War over, the soldiers grow bored, get slack and start giving in to bad
ideas, such as tackle-football indoors and heroin.
Meanwhile, like a crooked Ferris Bueller, Elwood scams his commanding officer (Ed Harris), fences anything not nailed down, collides with a no-nonsense sergeant (Scott Glenn) and ill-advisedly falls in love with the sergeant's daughter (Anna Paquin).
The movie flirts with interesting ideas about peace and war and soldiers and criminals; it's well-made and nicely juggles drama and dark humor; and literally all the casting is perfect. But as a fan of the book, too many times during the movie I found myself buying hard-to-buy scenes (for example, the massive opium refinery Elwood assembles right on the base) because of what I knew from the novel, not from what the movie was telling me. Which made me wonder: Would I have liked the movie more if I didn't know the book? By the time I got to the film's forced "happy" ending (which plays out much differently than O'Connor imagined it), I realized that if the movie were better, the book wouldn't matter.