In any movie when the lead characters are under siege or being stalked, it helps greatly if they behave in the most intelligent way possible. When their intelligent choices fail, the audience sympathizes and also feels a sense of growing dread.
You see this in a movie like Alien, which is of a different genre but not so dissimilar in basic structure. In that movie the characters, mostly scientists and technicians, make the right choice at every juncture based on the information they have, and still keep failing. There's conflict in the group, but the dissenting characters always eventually do as told. The constant failure of intelligent choices is a large part of what makes the movie scary.
In Southern Comfort you have a group of National Guardsmen, a few of whom seem to have a pretty good grip on things, and five or so who are flat out stupid. The choices of the stupid characters drag down the entire group. That could be one theme Walter Hill was intending to explore, but I doubt it, because later, when the competent characters are finally in control, they also make bad choices.
I'm not saying this bothers me because I think soldiers are smart or that their training always works. That's immaterial. The problem is that a group of stockbrokers or bus drivers or flamenco dancers could make better choices, so it isn't what this says about soldiers that's important, but what it says about the writers' estimations of audience intelligence.
But okay, since the first bad choice is made during the opening credits when one character callously cuts through a fishing net (not a spoiler), we know the soldiers are going to bring trouble on themselves due to their sense of macho entitlement. The idea that soldiers make enemies just by their mere presence in alien territory is clear, and has been explored in documentaries like Hearts & Minds, so I get that. And on that level Southern Comfort works fine.
The action is also pretty good because it isn't over the top. There's a dynamite explosion that puts CGI to shame. The ground actually shakes for real. So on a visceral level the movie is pretty good. And it's decently directed by Walter Hill. He would do better later, which is good, because there are some continuity fails here, including one scene where a character's wound changes sides in a cutaway, but basically it's well done and under what I imagine to be difficult circumstances.
But when the characters can't get even the most basic strategic choices right, it's tough to enjoy the movie fully. Watch it for the setting, action, and some Cajun slice of life scenes at the end, and maybe watch it to see Walter Hill playing with some ideas he'd make work better in his 80s movies, but don't expect Southern Comfort to thrill you.
You see this in a movie like Alien, which is of a different genre but not so dissimilar in basic structure. In that movie the characters, mostly scientists and technicians, make the right choice at every juncture based on the information they have, and still keep failing. There's conflict in the group, but the dissenting characters always eventually do as told. The constant failure of intelligent choices is a large part of what makes the movie scary.
In Southern Comfort you have a group of National Guardsmen, a few of whom seem to have a pretty good grip on things, and five or so who are flat out stupid. The choices of the stupid characters drag down the entire group. That could be one theme Walter Hill was intending to explore, but I doubt it, because later, when the competent characters are finally in control, they also make bad choices.
I'm not saying this bothers me because I think soldiers are smart or that their training always works. That's immaterial. The problem is that a group of stockbrokers or bus drivers or flamenco dancers could make better choices, so it isn't what this says about soldiers that's important, but what it says about the writers' estimations of audience intelligence.
But okay, since the first bad choice is made during the opening credits when one character callously cuts through a fishing net (not a spoiler), we know the soldiers are going to bring trouble on themselves due to their sense of macho entitlement. The idea that soldiers make enemies just by their mere presence in alien territory is clear, and has been explored in documentaries like Hearts & Minds, so I get that. And on that level Southern Comfort works fine.
The action is also pretty good because it isn't over the top. There's a dynamite explosion that puts CGI to shame. The ground actually shakes for real. So on a visceral level the movie is pretty good. And it's decently directed by Walter Hill. He would do better later, which is good, because there are some continuity fails here, including one scene where a character's wound changes sides in a cutaway, but basically it's well done and under what I imagine to be difficult circumstances.
But when the characters can't get even the most basic strategic choices right, it's tough to enjoy the movie fully. Watch it for the setting, action, and some Cajun slice of life scenes at the end, and maybe watch it to see Walter Hill playing with some ideas he'd make work better in his 80s movies, but don't expect Southern Comfort to thrill you.