Tigerland

spaceprophet (spaceprophet@netscape.net) wrote on IMDB:

I was totally blown-away by Schumacher's raw, graphic, and sometimes surreal film about what happens to men at a boot camp before they are sent to Vietnam. This is completely divergent from his previous Batman movies and his other glamorous special effects extravaganzas. Libatique's photography and the gritty acting of an all unknown cast, especially Farrell's, is unforgettable. The film centers around an insurgent and tenacious private and his struggles against the system that is designed to turn men into killers for war. It's The Cuckoo's Nest in an army boot camp instead of a hospital but still original. He becomes a reluctant leader to the others in the company because of his courage and his belief in humanity. Not a typical 'war film' and can reach out to all audiences.

ERasmussen14 wrote on IMDB:

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, but it is nothing new.

Everyone here is grouping it with other war movies, this movie has been miscategorized! Its not a war movie any more than "One flew over the cuckoos nest" is a asylum movie or "Cool Hand Luke" is a prison movie. This is a movie about individuality, nonconformity, self-confidence and the costs of that personality type.

The plot is the same as "One flew over the Cuckoos nest" and "Cool Hand Luke", its in GOOD company, and it holds its own. Its these movies it should be held up against and compared, not "Apocalypse Now" or "Platoon".

Eric

Georgios Tsapanos (320090256547-0001@t-online.de) wrote on IMDB:

"Tigerland" is a mixed bag.

As for being most definetly a career move, it´s a very clever one. Right after the intriguingly flawed "Falling Down" (1993) Mr. Schumacher was trying to kill his reputation by playing the hired-gun-director in a both megalomaniac and boring string of alternating John-Grisham- and Batman-movies. Somebody must have told him or maybe he sensed it himself, for "Flawless" (1999) and even "8 MM" (1998)tried to be real, stand-alone-movies and not part of a merchandising campaign. "Tigerland" looks like an even more radical departure from mainstream-big-bucks-movie-making. No stars, hand held camera, bleached out colors, blurred images: any- and everything in here - while Mr. Schumacher starts increasingly resembling a real director, an artist who cares about his art again - is shouting: ART! IMPORTANT! MESSAGE!   [ show more ]

But that´s exactly the point where the problems start to overshadow the movie´s clever performance. Not for a single moment does "Tigerland" know weather it wants to be an anti-Vietnam movie in particular or an anti-war movie in general or a study on the effects of harsh, often even inhuman military training on young, unsuspecting males or a melodramatic comedy or a buddy movie or a too-clever-for-its-own-good-remake of Walter Hill´s masterpiece "Southern Comfort" (1981). If you don´t believe me check out the young leading man´s motivations and actions. He is introduced as a troublemaker who just can´t help causing trouble because the army and he match like heaven and hell. Keeping up some pretense of staying in character the film makers show him arranging to go A.W.O.L while constantly fighting his somehow dim witted and brutish superiors. But they´re not that brutal and dim witted as not to notice that our anti-war-hero is the best soldier in the whole rookie-platoon and a born leader too. Consequently he doesn´t leave camp but acknowledges his responsibilities. The longer the movie is running the more does it back my suspicion that for box-office-reasons Mr. Schumacher secretly wants his audience to root for "Tigerland"´s hero because of his warrior´s abilities and not because of his contrasting, alas half-hearted tries to desert the army. Needless to say that this attitude undermines any of the film´s pretenses to be more than the average war-is-hell-but-someone-has-to-do-the-job-flick.

Don´t let "Tigerland´s" visual design fool you. And in case you want to see a really good movie about the effects of war an young men, give John Irvin´s much underrated, and unjustly so, "Hamburger Hill" (1987) a second chance. [ show less ]