Upon its release last year, Gregor Jordan's inky-black Cold War comedy, Buffalo Soldiers, provided a classic example of what can happen to a perfectly decent movie when best intentions collide with world events. Finished several months before the tragedy of 9/11, and set on a military base in Germany, circa 1989, Buffalo Soldiers asked audiences to look back at a time when, primarily out of greed and boredom, the all-volunteer U.S. Army declared war on itself.
As portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, supply specialist Ray Elwood is equal parts Sgt. Ernie Bilko and Lt. Milo Minderbinder, which is to say his character is supposed to remind us of a roguish con man who uses his uniform as a license to steal.
As Buffalo Soldiers opens, the soldiers of the 317th Supply Battalion are about to be introduced to a top sergeant with the mission of cleaning up the loosely supervised outpost. The primary pastime of these particular troops is finding new ways to profit from a black-market economy founded on such disparate enterprises as selling stolen Mop'N'Glo to the locals and cooking heroin for the base's ruthless head of military police, Sgt. Saad.
In a bloody, drug-fueled snafu, Elwood and his partners find themselves in possession of $5 million in stolen arms.
The resultant chaos, at once hilarious and horrifying, reveals the very real racial divide of the time, and the lengths soldiers would go to keep their adrenaline flowing in the absence of a well-defined enemy. On this count, Buffalo Soldier was largely successful.
Unfortunately, the edgy niche comedy was unveiled at the Toronto Film Festival on September 8, 2001. In the hours between the premiere and the terrorist attacks, Miramax announced that it had purchased Buffalo Soldiers and would give it the big marketing push it needed. Instead of Oscar consideration, however, the company was strapped with a monumental dilemma.
The patriotic fever that swept the nation in the wake of the murderous plane hijackings and invasion of Afghanistan prompted Miramax to postpone its release at least twice.
In the American public memory, that period in our history simply never existed. When the studio finally bit the bullet last summer, it was overwhelmed by criticism about a poster that showed Phoenix in military uniform, flashing a peace sign, with an American flag behind him in which the stars had been replaced with dollar signs. The bastardized slogan, "Steal All That You Can Steal," didn't help.
Despite Buffalo Soldiers dying a horrible death at the box office, it is well worth seeing. While not a masterpiece by any means, it fits neatly within a genre that includes Stalag 17, Dr. Strangelove, M*A*S*H, Catch-22 and other black, anti-war comedies of the last half-century. Not surprisingly perhaps, the art included in the DVD package bares little suggestion that Phoenix is a soldier in the U.S. Army, or that the film has anything remotely provocative to offer adult audiences.
Dive into an erotic thriller
For my money, which isn't much, Francois Ozon' sexy thriller Swimming Pool was one of the best movies of 2003. Certainly, there weren't any hotter performances than those turned in by Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier, two very different women involved in a psychological tug of war in the south of France.
Rampling plays a dour British mystery author who's invited to use her publisher's home while writing her new tome. Just as she settles in, however, the publisher's loud and sexy daughter unexpectedly arrives with a parade of boyfriends. The more the two women get to know each other, the creepier and more intriguing the movie becomes.
Wild at heart
Billy Bob Thornton's Daddy and Them is another movie that Miramax sat on for years, before dumping into cable and video. This, despite a cast that included Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Kelly Preston, Andy Griffith, Brenda Blethyn, Ben Affleck, Jamie Lee Curtis, the late Jim Varney and even singer John Prine.
The hillbilly comedy's chances for success weren't helped when the writer-director dumped Dern for Angelina Jolie, but there also were editing issues involved. With Bad Santa, Love Actually, Intolerable Cruelty and Monster's Ball now on his list of credits, Thornton is back in the limelight for positive reasons.
Broken English
How Brit comic Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) and John Malkovich, not to mention singer Natalie Imbruglia, ended up in the same movie is anyone's guess, but Johnny English probably won't be included in any of their highlight reels.
Suffice it to say, it's an Austin Powers-like parody that doesn't go anywhere that franchise hasn't … three times, already. Atkinson's fans surely will find more to like here than other viewers.