Southern Comfort

It's the land of hospitality... unless you don't belong there
It's the land of hospitality... unless you don't belong there
SOUTHERN COMFORT (18)
D: Walter Hill
EMI/Phoenix/CGV (David Giler)
US 1981
106 mins

Action/Adventure/Thriller

W: Michael Kane, Walter Hill & David Giler
DP: Andrew Laszlo
Ed: Freeman Davies 
Mus: Ry Cooder

Keith Carradine (PFC Spencer), Powers Boothe (Cpl. Charles Hardin), Fred Ward (Cpl. Lonnie Reece), Franklin Seales (PFC Simms), T.K. Carter (Pvt. Tyrone Cribbs), Lewis Smith (Pvt. Stuckey)

A fine action thriller which blends elements from the plot of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" but also throws in a Vietnam war allegory for good measure.
A small platoon of National Guard soldiers are on a routine exercise in the Louisiana swamps inadvertently start a war with a group of Cajun inhabitants. With a lack of ammo and no real experience in life-or-death missions, the odds are stacked against them to make it out alive.
It's a tightly constructed and tensely directed action film, much more intelligent than many that were released early in the same decade. 
Some viewers may draw a comparison with 1972's Deliverance (qv), but they're two very different films entirely.
8/10
 
Southern Comfort
Southern Comfort