Southern Comfort (1981)

Although Southern Comfort is raw in its looks and violence, it has a lot to say about the time of its release, but also is worryingly appropriate when the themes are attributed to today. In the same week I finished Adam Curtis' superb new series, Can't Get You Out Of My Head (available on BBC Iplayer and hugely recommended) seeing a film in which poor decisions made by military leaders lead to disastrous consequences, hammers down the message that people in power really don't learn from their mistakes. During the Vietnam war, a squad of National Guardsmen take part in a military training exercise in the deep swamps of Louisiana. They start making problems for themselves when a self entitlement complex, the likes of which we see so frequently in depictions of military characters, leaves them thinking it's perfectly fine to steal some canoes to get themselves across a section of river. The dialogue during the decision to take the canoes is problematic but sadly accurate to many real decisions taken in Vietnam itself. The thought in the soldiers minds is immediately one that they are more important than the shack living dwellers of the swamps, and their needs are more relevant. The choice they make sets the scene for the rest of the film, the group begins to turn on each other, and at least there is some sort of realisation amongst them that their previous thoughts and prejudices come from an ignorant and ill informed place. However, it's not just the guardsman pertaining to the violence, the locals fire the first live shots. This is what makes the film interesting, and it is scrappy and it is raw, but it has a hell of a lot to say. It's not as good a film as Deliverance (1972), from which it shares certain themes, but it's certainly worth your time. 7.0/10