LORD OF THE FLIES meets DELIVERANCE in Walter Hill’s chilling survivor tale about a small platoon of National Guardsman on a training exercise that goes haywire in the swamp-lands of Louisiana Cajun country. An easy allegory to American interventionist policies, here weekend warriors fire blanks, justify action with patriotic patronizing & arrogance, or cite first-world entitlement with empty phrases of pigheaded stubbornness and feverish religion. Hill smartly lets parallels to recent foreign entanglements speak for itself to concentrate on how the men got into such deep shit with unseen/unfriendly natives. (You can’t call Cajuns indigenous people, but that’s the idea.) No surprise then that the lost men's desperate situation is entirely brought on by the Guards' own actions and willful ignorance; the squad misreading themselves and their attackers. Peter Coyote and Fred Ward are part of this Ugly American team, but the film belongs to new Texas import Powers Boothe (able to see things plain), and local reservist Keith Carradine, a good ol’ boy of character; no redneck he. Carradine never did anything finer. Filmed in hellish swamp locations, Hill is phenomenal with his cast, and with the settings.* While staging the action, especially a last attack in the middle of a small town food festival, in terrific fashion. What action chops! Clear logistics and believable consequences. Hurrah! (It really shouldn’t be so rare.)
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/SPOILER: *Hill's sole unforced error a major one, another example, typical of the time, in tagging the one meaningful Black player with the first/most gruesome death.
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