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The war at home, "the great primordial swamp." Walter Hill gives machismo, and he takes it away—rigorously laid to isolate and crumble the masculine psyche, the deadpan stance has the National Guardsmen shooting blanks straight at the camera while people and vehicles casually pass in front of them. Louisiana, 1973, a military exercise, a slog with the promise of prostitutes at the end. Stolen canoes and jokey fusillades are no way to treat your backyard, Cajun trappers fire back with real bullets and the hunt is on. The sergeant (Peter Coyote) is promptly killed, the second in command (Les Lannom) only knows the manual, the chief hothead (Fred Ward) carries live ammo, the hulking nutcase (Alan Autry) fancies himself an avenging angel with a prophetically idiotic slogan ("Mission accomplished"). Leadership falls to the fancy-pants private (Keith Carradine) and the newcomer from Texas (Powers Boothe) as the men are picked off by unseen opponents, the terror is voiced by the despairing grunt (Franklyn Seales) who, faced with ingrown menace, can only wail "I'm not supposed to be here!" Ford's The Lost Patrol is the cornerstone, Renoir's Swamp Water is twice quoted, the sound design (the slosh of boots, the cackle of birds, the thwack of traps) rivals Buñuel's in La Mort en ce Jardin. Hill composes the bayou in mossy greens and browns, overlapping dissolves and lateral tracks are part of a study to make mental states visible. Carradine and Boothe make it out of the marsh with cracked armors, paranoia creeps in at the backwoods fete via sinister montage (slaughtered hog, raucous hoedown, armed rustics). Boorman in Deliverance leaves the nightmare suspended, Hill accelerates it toward the image of a marauding helicopter (cp. Through a Glass Darkly). "We have met the enemy..." Cinematography by Andrew Laszlo. With T.K. Carter, Lewis Smith, and Brion James.
--- Fernando F. Croce |