Buffalo Soldiers .

 

NONE MORE BLACK - review by Stew.

'Buffalo Soldiers' then. I saw this film a few weeks ago, but have only just got off my fat ass to write about it. Actually, I'm not 'off' my fat ass in technical terms, I'm working a more metaphorical angle on the whole concept here. I am in fact sitting down. I could stand up like Little Richard at the piano at my computer keyboard, but let's face it, that's fucking stupid, and wouldn't do my dodgy back any good. Certainly wouldn't help the review none. In fact, just contemplating it has already eaten heavily into the word count. Man, this is boring. I know - LET'S DO SOME HEROIN!

Nah. Just kidding. The Horse does play a large part in 'Buffalo Soldiers', though. Scrap that - it plays a HUGE part; it is the raison d'etre for the entire film, truth be told. A wacky black comedy about bent US soldiers stationed in Germany at the end of the cold war, peddling drugs and guns and cleaning fluid amongst themselves and the local criminal elements, this film is one of the bleakest things I have ever fucking seen in my life!

And I mean that in a good way…

Joaquin Phoenix plays Ray Elwood, an army clerk with a sideline as a black marketeer, who inadvertently comes across a cache of weapons and trades them for enough raw heroin to make him and his buddies millionaires - of course, the whole thing goes massively tits up, mainly thanks to the arrival of new Top Sergeant Lee, (Scott Glenn), who hates Elwood with a vengeance - not least because Elwood screws his daughter, (Anna Paquin). Okay, Elwood eventually manages to just about fall in love with her, but his initial intention is just to really piss Lee off. Elwood, quite frankly, is just a fuckin' prick. And he's the most likeable character in the whole film!

Still, that's what makes this movie such a blast - not one character has a single redeeming feature, and nobody who makes it out of the movie alive learns a single lesson from the preceding shitstorm they found themselves in. Even Phoenix, the lead in this flick, remains a total self-serving cock throughout the movie, despite going through all manner of personal and professional hell; there's not a single hero on display for two solid hours, and nobody but nobody does the right thing. The morality of this film is so fucked up, its impossible to even form an opinion on what the right thing is; there's no judgemental tone at all, we're just left to decide for ourselves who's doing the right thing at any given moment during a given situation. For instance, do we root for the soldier who's cooking up industrial vats of heroin, or the other soldier who's trying to literally kill him?

People have compared 'Buffalo Soldiers' to 'M*A*S*H', which is lazy and a little off-mark. 'M*A*S*H' may have an anti-authoritarian mindset and a military setting, but at least the characters have a fundamental acknowledgement of some sort of moral code; if Elwood and co. ran a mobile army surgical hospital, they'd turf the dying into an open grave and flog the painkillers. 'M*A*S*H', for all it's anti-authoritarian stance, is a good-natured, tail-end-of-hippy movie, whereas 'Buffalo Soldiers' is just nihilistic. It's not anti-war - it can't be bothered to make a stand for anything. Black as fucking coal.

This isn't meant to put you off, by the way, just to set your mind at rest while watching the film that, no, its not going to pussy out on you - its dark from top to bottom, baby! There are a few moments when I thought, 'ah, now it's just going to become 'Stripes'', but no, it keeps up the same vicious, vigorously 'fuck you' attitude all the way through. Even the soundtrack by David Holmes keeps you feeling edgy, always playing against the action but still perfectly complementary, never taking the easy 'film score' route.

This is a very funny film about very nasty people that has the courage of its convictions and never lets up or gives in to traditional Hollywood conventions. One of the best films I've seen so far this year - I'd say you should see it. Really.