The opening of this film is some master class film making. Set is perhaps the early '70s, a group of National Guardsmen are unloading into the middle of no place in a swamp. They are unserious weekend soldiers who don't care to be there, they don't all really get along and their officers are routinely mocked. Oh, and they only have blank ammunition, loads of it. We learn everything we need about the setup in the first two minutes.
The squad we follow is assigned to match off across the swamp from point A to point B. They spend a lot of time complaining and bickering and naturally become lost. A series of dumb mistakes and they find themselves hunted by local Cajuns, who actually know what they're doing.
The film's greatest strength lies in its atmosphere. The bayou setting, with its dense vegetation, murky waters, and eerie silence, creates a palpable sense of unease and isolation. The tension builds as the guardsmen realize their predicament and that their situation has become serious. They are incompetent strangers in a strange land. They don't speak the language, they're lost (literally and metaphorically) and they're shooting blanks. The Vietnam War allegory to pretty obvious.
The film features a solid cast with Keith Carradine standing out as the only level headed one in the group. The others, again we quickly learn, are strong, weak, dumb, impulse, crazy, etc. like seven dwarves. And that's a weakness in the film. We get the situation and a superficial characteristic for each man early on, and that's it. There's little depth to these people. They are as obvious as the metaphors of the film and the plot (we know full well what will unfold) suffers for it.
The locals are likewise superficial. They are mysterious "others" glimpsed through the trees, almost monsters in fact. This is likely deliberate, and the end sequence does attempt to add a human dimension to the swamp dwellers. But it's heavy handed and not enough. A missed opportunity...
This is not a major criticism though. The film simply does a number of things well, but a couple things merely adequately. "Southern Comfort" is none the less an engaging and exciting film from a director that knows how to hold the viewers interest. And it is definitely well worth watching.
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