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Show The Newspaper Thursday, November 12, 1981 Page MeeE WdNrMbm iek I! rough . , j , . - - ft .V '4 'A I ; ' f' ' f. 1 1 ' I ' ; If v t , . J . A & j - . v ' -Itif f v- : V N "i "SC.. A. V w V ,k " -r. iiHE i i . i , ,. 8 185TOX Cut, Split and Delivered order any length 654-1808 549-3937 IIWIIIIIIM ITALIAN RESTAURANT -, Keith Carradine (left) and Powers Boothe star as two civilians on weekend maneuvers with their National Guard unit who must face a real-life combat situation in a foreboding Louisiana bayou. 'Southern Comfort, A tough, tense story of survival AClassrtc ' Recommended Good double feature material Time-killer For masochists only y2 "Southern Comfort" "Southern Comfort" is "Deliverance" with a differencea differ-encea ripe atmosphere tale of American military spirit descending into madness. mad-ness. And, as you might guess, it is more than just a story about a Louisiana National Guard unit. Eight soldiers are out in the swamps on a routine exercise in survival. When they discover that shifting channels have flooded their route through the forest, they "borrow" three canoes from a deserted Cajun fisherman's fisher-man's village. And when they encounter a group of Cajuns downstream, one of the soldiers, on idiotic impulse, im-pulse, fires a stream of blank ammunition at them. They return fire, with real bullets, killing the only capable soldier in the unit, Sgt. Poole (Peter Coyote). The other "weekend soldiers sol-diers are left to face the wilderness wil-derness and the savage stratagems strata-gems of the Cajuns. Except for two, all of them are unable to meet the test of survival. Casper, the second-in-command (Les Lannon) talks a good game, but as he leads the troop in wandering circles around the swamp, it becomes clear that his knowledge amounts to a lot of classroom military jargon, jar-gon, and cliches from World War II movies. Reece (Fred Ward) is tough, but has no brains to back up the muscle. His method of gaining an objective is to slug his way to it. And his scrawny redneck buddy Stuckey (Lewis Smith) is even worse. He's nastiness without strength. Stuckey, fittingly, fired off the blanks that started the minor war. Bowden (Carlos Brown) is a high-school football coach and the staunchest moralist in the group he's the only one who opposes taking the boats. But when the game becomes survival instead of right and wrong, Bowden has no bearings to fix on, and he becomes one of the first to crack under the pressure. Sims, a middle-aged Negro ,,Franklyn Sealed is lost, confused, and prone to outbursts of violence. Cribbs the street hustler (T. K. Carter) smokes his reefers, goes with the flow, and finds out that isn't good enough. That leaves Spencer (Keith Carradine) and Hardin Har-din (Powers Boothe), the only two with the brains and the stamina to get the troop out safely. But neither one takes command from Casper, Cas-per, because they're held back by fears of a court-martial, court-martial, and maybe a little dose of Hamlet-like irresolu-. irresolu-. tion. But as the deaths mount and the pressure increases, the two men begin goading each other to take action. The director is Walter Hill (who co-wrote the script with David Giler and Michael Kane), a man who has been occupied in his films with showing violent men under pressure, in a kind of mythic or symbolic context. Up to now, his formulas have never quite been successful. suc-cessful. A previous direc-toral direc-toral effort, "The Long Riders," was a gripping but cursory retellng of the Jesse James legend, and the casting cast-ing of brothers to play brothers (Stacy and James Keach as Frank and Jesse) never became anything more than a gimmick. "The Warriors," another Hill film, showed New York City dominated by street gangs who were kin to ancient tribes and mythic Greek warriors. But the approach seemed over-romantic, over-romantic, and the picture's reflections on the dead-end violence of the gangs seemed like token sighs of condemnation. condem-nation. But at last, Hill seems to have found the perfect setting set-ting and metaphor for his theme survival in the swamp as a reference to Vietnam. That's not an original idea. You can lose count of all the editorial cartoons that showed Vietnam Viet-nam as a quicksand pit. And Pete Seger sang about Indochina Indo-china as being "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy." But Hill has filmed his story with an elemental force and a brooding certainty cer-tainty that violence can explode anywhere, at any time. He brilliantly taps our Vietnam-era paranoia in a sequence near the end of the film, where Spencer and Hardin have apparently made it through the swamp to safety at a Cajun village festival. "Relax, these are the good Cajuns," says Spencer. But Hardin is wary. As Hill paces the sequence, we begin to share Hardin's worry that the friendly natives might turn on them. But we also begin to think that Hardin himself is the threat. Maybe he's gone over the edge and will start slaughtering the villagers. The suspense is not just physical but moral the dilemma di-lemma of Lt. Calley brought home to us. Some of the Vietnam references are explicit. A soldier is killed by a springing spring-ing of spikes. You might even argue that the death of the young leader ,Sgt. Poole, flopping dead of a headshot wound in the moving canoe-evokes canoe-evokes the assassination of Kennedy. But such references are ,(. secondary , to the ..moviefr messagethat the Guardsman have unwittingly brought the ordeal upon themselves by their thoughtless intrusion into a "foreign country." Even Poole is a little guilty. . He allows the boats to be taken, and we see him casually cutting up a Cajun fishnet to clear his way. Hill has assembled a fine ensenjble of actors (in addition addi-tion to the soldiers, we must also mention Brion James as a brutalized Cajun trapper.) Andres Laszlo's photography photo-graphy has created a deadly, threatening world of murky water.white moss and tree trunks like Goliath feet. It's a world that constantly threatens to swallow them up, and always masks their cries for help. (They can see the Army helicopters searching search-ing for them, but the copters can't see them.) And Ry Cooder contributes a spooky, rustic score. Hill has gone astray in a few specific instances. One of the soldier's deaths is treated in slow-motion Peck-inpah Peck-inpah style a tired trick by now. And the script commits one error in logic. Spencer and Hardin are supposed to be good leaders, so when they split up the troop in one scene to find a missing Guardsman, you would expect ex-pect that Spencer would lead one half, and Hardin the other. Instead, they stick together, leaving an entire group of less-capable Guardsmen to wander off to predictable deaths. Most of "Southern Comfort," fortunately, is not predictable. It keeps us on edge with its grit and terror. The title is devastatingly ironic, for "comfort" may be the last thing you find here. Off season specials: 2 for 1 Fettucine night This Monday. Bring a friend! Mileti's spaghetti night Sunday night. All the spaghetti you can eat (includes salad & bread) for $3.95 Lasagna special , t. , , Tuesday iJ&WiJlimmm $4.95 Iti'J.i. I NOW OPEN 6-11 7 days a week 412 Main Street 649-8211 PRESTIGE HOMES REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT PRICE GROUP Park Meadows Plaza Box 701, Park City, Utah 84060 649-857S HOLIDAY VILLAGE MALL, PARK CITY, UT 649-6541 CO On MonaaV Nigm-Aii Ladies hq am: Starts Friday, Nov. 13, 1981 Him naiatic nmiij sfj itiry. Sat-Sun 3:30,7:15 Mon-Fri 7:15 Sat-Sun 2:00, 5:30, 9:15 g moo Kl 9:15 tf- A tunt filltd 1 W Mnimatmri THE ARISTOCATS KURT New York City i i RUSSELL walled maximum security priton. ESCAPE 7 AM Sat-Sun 2:30, 7:30 Mon-Fri 7:00 Sat-Sun 4:30, 9:00 Mon-Fri 9:00 CHUCK MORRIS 0OESN T fjpff. NEED A WEAPON - f . ' . HE IS A WEAPON' R is Sat Sun 2:00, 3:45, 5:30 7:15,9:00 Mon Fri 7:15,9:00 ITS BACK! IT'S BIGGER! IT'S BETTER! And it's... 3-m COnifJATVA! FREEm -VIEWERS 0 till ES) QGSMMMJi Starting November 27th, 1981: Late shows every Friday & Saturday night P5 |