Grunts...Twenty-First Century Style

Watching the Vietnam-based film Tigerland last night, I recalled a time several years ago when I spent a happy few weeks devouring war films left, right and centre. What has always fascinated me about the best films of this kind is that they are more effective at portraying horror than the horror genre itself. The best a slasher flick can do is to render the viewer dizzy at the thought of the tortures on screen being applied to their own frail bodies. But to instill the Fear into the quivering watcher for ninety full minutes, not by using blood-splattered cleavers and toxic sewer babies, but by making them nervous of entire governments, nations, the institutions whom we rely on to survive day to day…it's an impressive feat when accomplished properly, and in extreme cases can reduce the paranoid viewer to a terrified, gibbering wreck.

Tigerland wasn't that kind of film, though. It was more concerned with pursuing the familiar angle of painting a sympathetic portrait of some fast-talking maverick who bends the system and busts a few officious noses. Stick him in a few boxes, see how he reacts, and meanwhile we sit back and cheer as he bashes his way through a platoon of authority figures and arrogant thugs, whilst befriending the weak and the meek. We don't care about the meaning of the war so long as Sergeant Shouty gets quipped at.

Well, that all sounds rather negative. So let us redress the balance…the film was well constructed, well acted, visually appealing, and gave its cruel, dry sense of humour a free reign. Is it even worth mentioning that, in some bizarre way, it reminded me of Top Gun? Perhaps I'm being disingenuous, but if you dump the love interest angle in Top Gun, the two films do resemble one another superficially. The training of military recruits. The maverick who comes out on top. The bug-eyed rival. The shirtless grunts trading insults in barracks. The buzzing of a control tower in a big shiny plane.

That last one isn’t true, clearly. In fact, the analogy does tend to crumble on close analysis, and I don't even know why I started it. Filmmaking in the eighties and filmmaking now are different beasts, and you would never get the intense earnestness of Top Gun's perfect hero in today's more knowing and sophisticated world. Top Gun is pure Hollywood – Tigerland is low-budget and gritty. But despite each film's military setting there's no horror in either film, more of a sense of giving the male audience its satisfaction – a boy's own situation, involving laying an arrogant enemy low, a bunch of cool explosions, and a few tits thrown in. Even though I enjoyed the ride and the scenery, Tigerland remains vaguely unsatisfying.

If you have read any previous posts, you may have guessed by now that the intention of this post has been lost again here; it wasn’t to review the damn film. But the thing is written now and I have always been frightened of second drafts. So do I bite the bullet and give the film a rating to somehow validate the review?

No. I go and put the kettle on.

Click.