Movie Review: Southern Comfort (1981)

Genre: Survival Thriller  

Director: Walter Hill  

Starring: Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe, Fred Ward, Peter Coyote, T.K. Carter, Brion James  

Running Time: 105 minutes  

Synopsis: It's 1973 in rural Louisiana, and National Guard soldiers led by Staff Sergeant Poole (Peter Coyote) convene for a training exercise in the swamplands. The minimally competent men are armed with blank bullets, and include newcomer Hardin (Power Boothe), the easygoing Spencer (Keith Carradine), and the intense Reece (Fred Ward). Early in their training mission, the guardsmen antagonize Cajun hunters who live in the dense woods, triggering violence. The inexperienced Casper (Les Lannom) is forced to take command, while Hardin and Spencer realize they are being ruthlessly hunted deep in hostile territory.

What Works Well: This powerful metaphor for the Vietnam War drops poorly trained and ill-equipped soldiers into a fog-shrouded forest, and allows the conflict between hubris and locals to unfold with relentless intensity. Director Walter Hill packs plenty of individual personality into the men, while majestic Andrew Laszlo cinematography and Ry Cooder's music score create disorientation in outdoor terrain. The limited visibility, absence of landmarks, and swampy waters spill off the screen, and once the mission unravels, discipline disintegrates and the guardsmen fracture into individuals. Powers Boothe as Hardin and Keith Carradine as Spencer stand out by adhering to personal codes rather than any loyalty to the unit.

What Does Not Work As Well: Once the premise is set, the whittling away of the group proceeds on a linear path, and the you-don't-belong-here anti-war message is none too subtle.

Key Quote:

Sergeant Poole (puzzled by an unexpected body of water): Either this map is wrong, or all of a sudden I can't find my way around the block.

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The Movies Of Fred Ward

All movies starring Fred Ward and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Escape From Alcatraz (1979)

Carny (1980)

Southern Comfort (1981)

The Right Stuff (1983)

Silkwood (1983)

Tremors (1990)

The Player (1992)

Chain Reaction (1996)

Sweet Home Alabama (2002)

2 Guns (2013)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Chain Reaction (1996)

A doltish thriller set in the world of science, Chain Reaction has an incomprehensible plot and defaults to a tiresome series of repetitive and routine chases.

In Chicago, a group of University-funded researchers are working on a new hydrogen-based power source to produce plentiful and free energy. Dr. Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman) and Dr. Alistair Barkley (Nicholas Rudall) head the project, and the team includes physicist Dr. Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz), machinist Eddie Kasalivich (Keanu Reeves) and project manager Dr. Lu Chen (Tzi Ma). When the team finally achieves a breakthrough, their warehouse headquarters is invaded and destroyed in a spectacular explosion by unknown assailants. Barkley is killed, Chen disappears, and Sinclair and Kasalivich are framed as spies for a foreign government and go on the run.

FBI Agents Ford (Fred Ward) and Doyle (Kevin Dunn) lead the investigation, but Eddie and Lily stay one step ahead of their pursuers as they try to reconnect with Shannon. Meanwhile, the secretive C-Systems Research company headed by Lyman Earl Collier (Brian Cox) emerges as a shadow organization trying to control the science behind hydrogen energy.

Directed by Andrew Davis three years after his success with The Fugitive, Chain Reaction attempts to recreate the same formula of innocents-on-the-run and fails miserably. The fault lies entirely in a lame script credited to J.F. Lawton and Michael Bortman that places the focus squarely on scientific discovery and a large-scale conspiracy, and then fails miserably to explain itself even at the most rudimentary level.

This is a film where none of the villainous actions make any sense. The murder, large-scale destruction and mayhem caused by the explosion that launches the film appears to have achieved nothing, in that the bad guys flattened half of Chicago but did not manage to steal the secrets of the technology that purportedly triggered their action. The science is reduced to a series of noisy lasers, flashing lights and violently shaking cylinders, none of it deemed worthy of any clarification. The conspiracy is hurriedly explained in vague terms about world economic collapse, but the script does not bother to reveal what the antagonists' intentions are.

Elsewhere the lack of attention to basic details is evident. Eddie and Lily are supposedly smart people on the run for the entire film and never try to change their appearance. Perhaps Reeves demanded that his flowy long hair remain untouched during the shoot. Lily is a physicist, but the unfortunate Rachel Weisz is reduced to an almost mute appendage being pulled along by Reeves as they look for the next narrow escape. Not once does she say anything remotely smart or contribute to the plot.

With an acute lack of anything resembling thoughtfulness, Chain Reaction offers a never ending series of cheap thrills. This is bad guys chasing good guys in circles for close to two hours, less a sequential reaction and more of a downward spiral of dumbness.

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Movie Review: The Right Stuff (1983)

A grand celebration of the early days of the United States space exploration program, The Right Stuff is the finest level of ambitious drama. The story of men pushing against the farthest boundaries known to humanity is an exhilarating ride into new frontiers.

Soon after the end of World War Two, breaking the sound barrier is seen as the next major achievement in aviation. At Muroc Army Air Field in California, experimental aircraft are coming closer to the mythical threshold, and many pilots are dying as the equipment fails around them. Finally, war hero Captain Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) breaks the sound barrier in the rocket-powered Bell X-1, despite flying with broken ribs.

Chuck has the support of his wife Glennis (Barbara Hershey), who understands her man's desire to never settle for ordinary. Into the 1950s, Muroc is renamed Edwards Air Force Base, and the local watering hole becomes the preferred gathering place for some of the country best pilots who gather at Edwards set new speed records and test the newest, fastest and most dangerous planes. Yeager remains the spiritual guide for all the pilots, and he continues to re-set the speed record, including getting to Mach 2.0.

When the Soviet Union surprises the world by launching the Sputnik satellite, the US government scrambles to catch up, and the Mercury space program is born. After a series of rigorous fitness and stamina tests, seven military pilots are chosen to lead America into space, including John Glenn (Ed Harris), Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn), Gus Grissom (Fred Ward), Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid), and Walter Schirra (Lance Henriksen). The men form a tight bond and are anointed as the brave new explorers of the 20th Century, celebrated by the press as an excited nation gears up to confront new frontiers.

Shepard becomes the first American to launch into space, followed by Grissom, but the latter's flight is blemished by a mishap upon splashdown. Glenn is then selected to become the first American to orbit the earth, and his flight will feature an unexpected distraction. Back at Edwards, Yeager recognizes the changing times, but continues doing his thing: flying the most dangerous airplanes as fast and high as they can go.

Now recognized as a classic and one of the best films of the 1980s, The Right Stuff was remarkably a commercial failure upon its release. In 1982 space movies meant Return Of The Jedi and E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. Audiences enamoured with light sabres, laser guns, warp speed and cute aliens were not ready for a reality-based ensemble piece about the seemingly mundane business of figuring out how to take the first tentative steps into space.

Clocking in at a remarkable 192 minutes, The Right Stuff flies by at the speed of the sound. Director Philip Kaufman adapted Tom Wolfe's bestseller into an almost mythical story of modern knights daring to confront the monsters that live in the unexplored world of space travel, riding at the pointy ends of rockets launched with rudimentary, still-evolving technology. Except that this is all based on true events, and the bravery demonstrated by men like Yeager and the first astronauts laid the groundwork for humans to walk in the moon, a mere 10 years after the Mercury 7 were selected.

Kaufman's masterstroke is in weaving Yeager's story in with the space program. The Right Stuff blends the Greatest Generation that won the war with their younger and cockier brothers, men who reaped the rewards of victory and were then ready to take on the world - and space. Yeager represents the inspirational warriors of war, while men like Glenn and Shepard are the warriors of space exploration, who would not exist without the security and confidence that came with victory.

The Right Stuff includes plenty of colour, character, and surrounding personalities to humanize the story. The link between celebrity, money and success is made early, as the pilots and the politicians realize that secrecy does not pay-off; handsome men and their incredible flying machines will make headlines, and the money to sustain the program and allow it to flourish will follow.

The wives of the pilots suffer in silence, but suffer they do. Betty Grissom (Veronica Cartwright) is humiliated by the ignominious treatment handed to her husband after his spacecraft sinks. Trudy Cooper (Pamela Reed) suffers through her husband Gordon's absolute belief in his abilities. And Annie Glenn (Mary Jo Deschanel) suffers from a severe stutter, a condition that will result in a painfully funny non-encounter with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (Donald Moffat).

For the most part, government types (including Jeff Goldblum as a pilot recruiter), bureaucrats (particularly John P. Ryan as the Head of the NASA Manned Space Program) and rocket scientists (mostly Germans who switched sides after the war) are given short thrift and treated either as incompetent or clueless. The humour is appreciated, but it is left to other movies to recount the role played by the politicians and engineers to enable space flight.

A film without any dominant performances, each of the main actors gets a few scenes to shine. Shepard casts the longest shadow, while among the astronauts Ed Harris finds the charisma that propelled John Glenn first into orbit and then onto a successful political career. Fred Ward, Scott Glenn and Dennis Quaid sparkle when called upon. Barbara Hershey enjoys the unusual role of the cool pilot's wife who threatens her husband to never change his death defying ways.

Kaufman and his cinematographer Caleb Deschanel create a wide-open and blazing look for The Right Stuff, with stunning recreations of test flights, rocket launches and travel through space. Even the Earth-bound scenes at Edwards Air Base are characterized by flat terrain and open skies, an invitation for a brash nation to come forth and explore. The film is a wondrous visual experience, capturing a bright-eyed can-do spirit riding on not much more than bravado and a political imperative to keep up with and then overtake the Soviets, costs and risks be damned.

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Movie Review: Tremors (1990)

A comic horror flick, Tremors wins on style and attitude. The story of giant subterranean snakes terrorizing a tiny community is as silly as they come, and it gets the treatment that it deserves, heavy on fun, character, and charisma.

In and around the Nevada desolate desert town of Perfection (population: 14), the resourceful Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) do odd manual jobs and live an uncomplicated life, but hope for better things in bigger towns. They meet Rhonda (Finn Carter), a seismology student on a summer assignment to monitor seismometers in the area. She reports unusual activity, and soon people and cattle are found dead, sometimes gruesomely dismembered.

Rhonda, Val and Earl barely survive a close encounter with an ugly, large snake-like beast that travels underground and carries a huge appetite for soft human flesh. They retreat to Perfection, and team up with the local population, which fortunately includes the heavily-armed survivalist couple Burt (Michael Gross) and Heather (country music star Reba McEntire). A siege ensues, with the humans having to survive against repeated attacks from three of the hideous predators.

Tremors plays up personality, and gets away with it. There is nothing here to be taken seriously, and even the more horror-oriented scenes of the monsters devouring victims are more invigorating than scary. Ron Underwood, directing his first feature length movie, succeeds in making the locale and characters much more important than the monster elements. The setting evokes the imagery from every Roadrunner cartoon, and the film plays with the same sensibilities.

Tremors finds a winning combination in Val and Earl, two men rough around the edges, mostly made up of edges, and expertly brought to life by Bacon and Ward. Limited yet resourceful, always talking about the need for a plan but rarely coming up with one that fully works, Val and Earl possess the perfect set of handy skills to create a fair fight with mammoth but blind underground snakes.

Running an efficient 96 minutes, Tremors keeps things simple, Underwood moving the action along quickly, promptly arriving at the energetic people versus monsters moments, and allowing the slick interplay between Bacon and Ward to provide plenty of sharp relief at regular intervals. The rest of the cast members are there mostly to make up the numbers of local residents and token victims. Finn Carter tries for perky but cannot shake well-entrenched daytime soap and television acting skills, nor does she really need to, while Michael Gross and Reba McEntire make more of an impression as survivalists with a basement that the Pentagon would be proud of.

In concept and delivery, Tremors burrows its way to ground shaking entertainment in a compact and boisterous package.

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Movie Review: The Player (1992)

An acute satire of Hollywood, Robert Altman's The Player is a formidable movie that manages to poke fun at everything related to the business of making films. With an ensemble cast and a long list of stars making cameos, The Player can distract itself somewhat with a game of spot the celebrity, but Altman maintains a firm grip to a biting conclusion.

Studio executive Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) spends his days listening to pitches, trying to find the small percent of ideas that can be turned into successful movies. Griffin has two main problems. He is being threatened with severe bodily harm by a mysterious disgruntled writer who claims to have been disrespected; while competing executive Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher) appears to be making a power move to displace Griffin's position of authority within the studio.

Griffin does some research and concludes that struggling writer David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio) is behind the threats, and he contrives a meeting with Kahane's girlfriend, artist June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi). The subsequent encounter between Griffin and David to clear the air has a horrible ending, landing Griffin in a lot more trouble and at the centre of a police investigation headed by Detective Avery (Whoopi Goldberg). The studio's head of security Walter Stuckel (Fred Ward) has to swing into action to protect crumbling reputations, while Griffin pursues June at the expense of former girlfriend Bonnie (Cynthia Stevenson). Meanwhile, Griffin and Larry vie for control of the next hot script making the Hollywood rounds.

Altman open The Player with a fluid, continuous shot lasting 7 minutes and 47 seconds, introducing the key characters, establishing the studio's labyrinthine relationships, paying homage to Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, and throwing in the opening few salvos of satire. It's Altman's announcement that he will celebrate Hollywood while making fun of it, and it sets the context for what follows.

The rest of The Player contains many of the elements that often need to be checked off to make a Hollywood success: tension, mystery, confrontation, death, investigation, betrayal, lust, and political manoeuvring. Altman throws in some brief nudity to make the point, and concludes The Player with a devastating jab of ridicule to emphasize how quickly Hollywood turns supposed art into crass commerce. In a final act of jocular defiance, Altman also bends one of filmdom's golden rules, allowing a character who has sinned to escape unscathed.

Tim Robbins as Griffin Mill struts around Hollywood in oversized suits, a young man with amplified confidence, huge responsibilities and larger pay cheques, wielding influence and power way beyond his years. With a high profile, Mill is an obviously tempting target, and his success is a lightning rod attracting external and internal challenges. Robbins wears it all with a sense of quiet manipulation, never questioning his abilities but acutely aware that his entire life is a tightrope walk.

Greta Scacchi misses another chance at stardom, Altman giving her every opportunity, bathing her in white and setting her up as an attractive conquest for Griffin. Scacchi is merely adequate, unable to transform the role into anything more than the stock love interest.

The rest of the cast members perform a tight orbit around Mills' character, Peter Gallagher, Whoopi Goldberg, Vincent D'Onofrio and Fred Ward doing just enough to differentiate themselves from the 62 other Hollywood and entertainment notables listed as having performed a cameo.

Artistically, creatively and surreptitiously, there is always something going on as The Player gingerly picks his way through the perils of Hollywood. It's a unique world, and Altman captures it with a flourish.

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