"Gentlemen, it's all about respect..."

Rating: 8/10 (31 October 2018)

The strange thing about this film is that it's a movie about the Vietnam War without ever coming close to Vietnam. The environment at the Tigerland locale best approximated those of the depressingly tropical and swampy conditions of the war torn country of South Vietnam. Via the perspective of the military instructors, it's virtually a given that not only will everyone that goes through Tigerland ship off to the other side of the world, but that they probably wouldn't be coming back. If you go by the statistics of the war, that seems a bit unfair, as the fifty eight thousand soldiers who died in the conflict represented a little over two percent of the two million, seven hundred and ten thousand who served there. The stats were much worse for wounded and injured however, ratcheting up the casualty rate to about one in ten.
While attempting to demonstrate a single soldier's resolve to be as anti-authoritarian as possible, the story definitely serves as an anti-war film. Whether the brutality expressed and condoned by the superior officers was authentic or not, I would have to leave to the judgment of those who served at Fort Polk. Private Roland Bozz's one man mission to muster out as many of his fellow soldiers as possible appears to be his only recourse since his superior officers are dead set against filing a disciplinary charge that would result in a discharge, honorable or otherwise. With an unreadable personality and complete disregard for authority, Bozz cultivates friends and enemies within his platoon, which ultimately erupts into an all out personal war between himself and Private Wilson (Shea Whigham).
It's probably not too much of a stretch to consider that recruits like Private Miter (Clifton Collins Jr.) were all too common in the Army during this period. With little education and a conflicted home life, there was very little opportunity for someone with his kind of background to make a go of it in normal society. The film does a good job of bringing these dynamics to the fore, while demonstrating that war can be hell, even if you were half a world away from it.