These boys have a hide

Buffalo Soldiers
Stars Joaquin Phoenix, Anna Paquin, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn.
Rated M.
Reviewer: PTE Simone Heyer

Specialist Roy Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) runs a black market operation in Buffalo Soldiers.

This movie was first due out about the time of September 11, 2001, but because of the way the US Army was depicted, its distributors thought it best to hold it over for a few years until the world – in particular the Americans – could handle it.

Buffalo Soldiers has so many themes, ideas and truths – mixed with flashes of black humour – that it’s difficult to know where to begin to explain it.

We’re introduced to Specialist Roy Elwood (Phoenix) and his soldiers, a misfit bunch of Q-ies based in Stuttgart, West Germany, in the Cold War.

Like the all-American man, they’re fond of a toss of the gridiron ball. During the indoor game, one of the lads – who has just shot up in the storeroom – slips, bangs his head on a table and dies.

The letter to his family says he fell off the headquarters’ roof while making repairs – he died for his country, died for the American dream. This well sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

The young soldier died from drugs Roy had provided. Roy has a bit of a black market trade and drug racket going. He orders extra stores then sells them to the Germans, making the deliveries in Army trucks. He produces smack in the HQ and sells it to the other guys through the sergeant MP in the base’s boozer.

When a new top sergeant, Robert Lee (Glenn), comes to the base, he’s on to Roy’s scheme and starts knocking him down a peg or two – kicks in his prize TV, moves all his non-military furniture out of his lines and moves in a nerdy new guy.

Lee is one step ahead of Roy – until Roy starts dating Lee’s daughter (Paquin). Then it becomes personal.

One day, while the guys are on a bodgie job, they see a huge explosion in the town. Heading toward it, they realise an American tank (whose crew are off their faces) has driven over some fuel bowsers and a spark has ignited the fuel.

Two soldiers had tried to stop the rogue tank and were killed in the explosion but their trucks were intact.
Roy and his boys acquire the trucks and drive off to the forest to inspect the load.

They find a veritable armoury and hide it at a nuclear ground that’s out of sight, out of mind.
Roy finds a buyer for the weapons – a deal is made for more than enough drug ingredients to have the boys cooking overtime for the next two years.

Now Lee starts upping the ante, he removes smack stashes from pick-up points, organises hits on Roy’s boys, has Roy’s Mercedes used for target practice then starts picking off Roy’s crew one by one.

Roy tries to back out of the weapons deal, but it’s too late and everything is spiralling out of control.
Buffalo Soldiers is brilliant. It is pure gold – easily the best military-style movie this year.

It explores the not-so-polished side of the military, the seedy underbelly glossed over for the sake of a good name.

Unfortunately it has had a limited run in some places, which is disappointing as it deserves a longer season than some other movies that have been showing for some time.

How the movie rates: