"WHEN I ANALYZE THE STENCH"

REVIEW: of Buffalo Soldiers (James Bowman, July 29, 2003)

Though it may have been bad for the filmmakers, there is at least one good thing for audiences in the fact that Miramax had to postpone the release of Buffalo Soldiers after the events of September 11th, 2001 - and then again the following spring when focus groups tested badly, and then again earlier this year as the Iraq war loomed. For two years ago it would have been just a routine example of Hollywood's bashing of the American armed forces and military life in general. Now it is a perfect time capsule from a vanished era of movie history.

You will never again see a picture quite as bad as this one, or at least not bad in the same way.

It's easy to forget, now, the unrelieved bleakness of the cinematic prospect when it came to soldiers and soldiering between M*A*S*H (1970) and September 11. For more than three decades there was hardly a military hero to be found, unless he was first and foremost a victim of the time-servers, thugs and psychopaths that were supposed to have made up the preponderance of any military organization, or of the alleged insanity of military discipline itself.

To be sure, by the 1990s the anti-war, anti-military ethos showed signs of degenerating into a parody of itself in such preposterous idiocies as The Rock or The General's Daughter, but even the otherwise pro-military Saving Private Ryan was marred by a depiction of war as fundamentally senseless, apart from its eponymous rescue mission. Buffalo Soldiers, adapted from a book by Robert O'Connor and directed by the Australian Gregor Jordan, is solidly in the tradition of the preposterous idiocies.

Let's go out on a limb and predict that you won't see that blurb on the video package: "Buffalo Soldiers...is solidly in the tradition of the preposterous idiocies." Posted by Orrin Judd at July 29, 2003 5:12 PM