Southern Comfort
SOUTHERN COMFORT (18)
D: Walter Hill
EMI/Phoenix/CGV (David Giler)
US 1981
106 mins
Action/Adventure/Thriller
W: Michael Kane, Walter Hill & David
Giler
DP: Andrew Laszlo
Ed: Freeman Davies
Mus: Ry Cooder
Keith Carradine (PFC Spencer), Powers Boothe (Cpl.
Charles Hardin), Fred Ward (Cpl. Lonnie Reece), Franklin Seales (PFC Simms), T.K. Carter (Pvt. Tyrone Cribbs), Lewis Smith (Pvt. Stuckey)
A fine action thriller which blends elements from the
plot of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" but also throws in a Vietnam war allegory for good measure.
A small platoon of National Guard soldiers are on a
routine exercise in the Louisiana swamps inadvertently start a war with a group of Cajun inhabitants. With a lack of ammo and no real experience in life-or-death missions, the odds are
stacked against them to make it out alive.
It's a tightly constructed and tensely directed action
film, much more intelligent than many that were released early in the same decade.
Some viewers may draw a comparison with 1972's
Deliverance (qv), but they're two very different films entirely.
8/10
