BUFFALO SOLDIERS ----------------
Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix, "Signs") was given a choice of serving time or his country and so brought his criminally experienced mind to the military. "War is hell, but peace is boring," Elwood tells us from the (fictional) Theodore Roosevelt Army Base in Stuttgart where he runs a black market operation trading army supplies for heroin that he cooks up for his fellow soldiers all under the admiring, cluelessly benign eyes of Colonel Berman (Ed Harris, "The Hours") in "Buffalo Soldiers."
Australian director Gregor Jordan's ("Two Hands") film had a terrific debut at the Toronto Film Festival and was snapped up for distribution on September 10, 2001. Since that time, Miramax has been loathe to release this black satire and is now unceremoniously dumping it into theaters. While the film deserves better treatment, it is a bit of a disappointment after such a long wait.
It's near the end of the Cold War and 1989 and Elwood is dreaming of falling like a bomb from "Dr. Strangelove" except he always hits the ground in his dream. The film's dark tone is set immediately when one of the 'soldiers with nothing to kill but time' dies in a freak football accident in a rec room. Elwood takes charge, dumping the body out of a top story window in order to spin a patriotic backstory for the condolence letter he types up for Berman.
Elwood beatifically smiles away Berman's questioning of his requisition for 1000 gallons of Mop 'n' Glo, then siphons 500 gallons of it to Herman the German. He keeps his hands clean of actual drug dealing by passing the H to Sgt. Saad (Shiek Mahmud-Bey, "Flawless"), whose MPs patrol the base like an LA street gang. One day smack addict Harris (Glenn Fitzgerald, "Tully," looking like a young Daniel Day Lewis) guides his tank off course during maneuvers, crashing through a local marketplace, demolishing a car ('Oh man, we squashed a Beetle!') and wiping out a gas station with a spectacular explosion that kills two army drivers transporting weapons. Elwood arrives on the scene and immediately decides to become an arms dealer, but the incident brings the arrival of a new Top Sergeant, Robert E. Lee (Scott Glenn, "The Shipping News"), who makes it his mission to bring Elwood down.
Screenwriters Eric Weiss ("Bongwater") and Nora Maccoby ("Bongwater") (adapting the book by Robert O'Connor) structure the film into acts with symbolic 'fallings.' Lee's daughter turns out to be pretty Robyn Lee (Anna Paquin, "X2") a high diver that Elwood hooks up with to needle her dad but ends up falling for. She helps him over his fear of flying for a climax that will set them both free. Jordan's dark comedy loses its humorous aspects in its final round, though, becoming a nasty battle to the death between the relentlessly driven Lee and the not usually challenged but resilient Elwood.
Phoenix is slyly engaging as the mercenary opportunist. He keeps audiences on his side even when he betrays his boss, uses women and trades U.S. weaponry for profit (it is this last act that is the most cringe-inducing in today's world, but try and put yourself in 1989 frame of mind). He's a scoundrel that you want to root for. I don't recall Ed Harris ever playing quite this type of role before, a blissfully unaware dreamer who's bungled his way into a high ranking position that positively does not suit his temperament. Glenn is less interesting, a standard issue military hard ass, but Paquin, as his daughter, spins just enough kooky wildness into Robyn to make Elwood's interest believable. Gabriel Mann ("The Life of David Gale") is artful in his presentation of the mousy Knoll, a geeky kid Lee forces Elwood to room with who makes more than one surprising move after being beaten to a pulp by Saad's bullies. Fitzgerald gives the film's out-and-out funniest performance reacting to the havoc he's wrought before smoothly slipping back into military formation with a crooned assurance that even cracks himself up. The film also features Elizabeth McGovern ("The House of Mirth") as Berman's wife who is sleeping with Elwood and Dean Stockwell ("Blue Velvet") as a general Berman is trying to impress.
"Buffalo Soldiers" rebounds with a closure that repeats its opening - a scoundrel's circle of life. It's as if Sgt. Bilko found himself in a Catch-22 after surviving a M.A.S.H. unit.
B-
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