Popular reviews

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  Review by Mandrakegray ★★★★★ 12

  If I could submit one film segment as the greatest from the 80's, then I would cite the final 15 minutes of Walter Hill's underrated (although that's starting to change) 1981 masterwork.

  Throughout the whole film till that point, we've been blessed with an amazing soundtrack provided by Ry Cooder. But for the home stretch, Hill chose to drop it as the main characters arrive to where the last act will take place. In it's place is the genuine sounds and atmosphere (something the film is steeped in) of the locals gathering for a big ol' Cajun hog roast. The location, use of real locals as extras, and the strains of the resident band playing the dance all add to…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★ 3

  73

  What's integral about Southern Comfort is the initial expository scene, where all the soldiers gather together before heading into the Louisiana swamp. We learn that they don't take themselves or the job that seriously, and they care even less about the people who inhabit the forest. Of course, it immediately gets them into deep trouble, but Walter Hill explores how the masculine habits of these men are soon left vulnerable and lost without the structure of their occupation. The final 15 minutes are about as tense as can be.

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  Review by Todd Gaines ★★★½ 13

  It's Predator without Predators and Aliens without Aliens in Walter Hill's tale of trouble on the bayou. Target practice. Cold fish. Row, Row, Your fuckin' boat. Dead Coyote. Nauls before he met Mac. The way Powers Boothe holds a knife. Bill's biological brother. Casper the reluctant leader. Brion fuckin' James's beard. War paint. DYNO-mite! Stuckey's gold tooth. Kinda-friendly doggies. The ultra-intensity of Fred fuckin' Ward. Louisiana water torture. Grave diggin'. Timber! Blanks make the best cover fire. Quicksand. Firing squad. Swingin' Bubba. Hitchhiking. Wild and crazy Cajun partying. Billy motherfuckin' Sole's mustache. A big-ass piggy. Dancin' straight outta You Got Served. Stabbin' dick. Bayonet. The fuckin' cavalry. A fuckin' intense film that surprisingly doesn't have a shit-ton of action. Fantastic character development with memorable performances from Powers Boothe and Keith Carradine. Moody bluesy soulful music throughout that sets the mood just right. A damn fine war film that you should check out.

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★

  The cap of a loose triptych of films about the abasement of American imperial pride in its own backwaters. The first, John Boorman's Deliverance, explicitly emasculated its macho adventurers in a brutal attack on personal and national self-identity. The second, First Blood, found authoritarian confidence so rattled that domestic cops took out their own frustrated sense of control on a rattled, neglected veteran. Southern Comfort sends a National Guard on maneuvers in the Louisiana bayou where they immediately act like invaders, stealing boats from local Cajuns, then being enraged when those people dare to defend their property.

  Naturally, Vietnam comparisons abound, though Hill was right to dismiss them as he tackles a more deeply rooted issue of military self-perception; his…

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 5

  Hill has long been a vocal admirer of the old-school tough and economically-minded Hollywood action directors of the 1930-1950s, and the stripped-down purity of their genre craftsmanship. He always felt he would've been a more fitting contemporary among Hawks, Ford, Boetticher, Walsh, Siegal, Fuller, etc. rather than the New Hollywood revisionists he came up alongside. But similarly to Sam Peckinpah (an artist Hill briefly worked with and blatantly pulled many aesthetic techniques from, especially his love of goopy slomo squibs), he ultimately did find a way to translate the modern 60s-70s ugliness and cruelty onto the old macho formulas he loved, and Southern Comfort might just be one of his finest examples of doing so, taking the old army patrol…

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★★ 3

  Macho paranoid hysteria has rarely been put on-screen with such skill. The knot get tied carefully more and more until those beautiful sustained final 15 minutes at the community. Great ensemble acting and Hill does such a great job of playing around the idea of a fractured group, like the next year’s The Thing (TK Carter is in both), it is the work of a self-appointed Hawks disciple set into twisting a lot of his principles around. The Cajuns hunting the main characters are masters in psychological warfare, they seem less interested into punishing them by killing than making sure every man drawn into their own paranoid madness, the overcompensating wounded male behavior that remains in the background pushed to the breaking point.

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★½ 17

  “Southern Comfort” is a “Lord of the Flies” for adults who should know better. 

  The fact that they don’t - or do, and misbehave anyway - is what lends Walter Hill’s military film its grit and total lack of glory. 

  “Comfort” depicts a group of US soldiers on a training exercise in the Deep South, while America continued its increasingly muddy war in Vietnam. Maneuvers turn mangled as everything goes the opposite of planned. 

  In interviews, Hill appears adamant that “Comfort” be taken as it is; for face value, and without allegory to a greater conflict. The period piece setting works against the ease of this, but it is still possible, though strenuous, to place “Comfort” entirely within the bounds…

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  Review by Dave Edwards ★★★★½

  While it’s difficult to pinpoint the best segment in Walter Hill’s legendary filmography,* after my last viewing of Southern Comfort, I think my personal favorite is the last 15 minutes of his survival horror/western/action movie hybrid. Hill’s film follows a squadron of National Guard Citizen-Soldiers who get in over their heads during an excursion to Louisiana’s swampland, and due to a critical lapse in judgement**, cause a particularly nasty group of bayou boys to rain holy hell down on the overmatched and underprepared Minutemen.

  Those lucky enough to survive the gauntlet of boobytraps laid by the backwoods Cajuns, stumble upon a small village about to roast a hog and have themselves a good old-fashioned hootenanny. Hill makes the wise decision…

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  Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★★★½

  despite featuring nothing supernatural, monstrous or stereotypically horrific, manages to hone in on a distinctly american type of horror that roots itself in the backwoods of the south and makes its protagonists as villainous as their sadistic adversaries -- one of the better indictments of american war culture there is and from one of our best genre filmmakers; an earnestly angry movie propelled by a cast that knows it

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★½ 8

  Action! - The Unlikely Rumble: Hill v Hyams

  Our Walter Hill recovers from the hook he received from Hyams, but he is on the verge of getting stuck against the ropes. This validates the biblical scripture "take heed lest he who believes he stands take heed lest he fall."

  Having saying that, I can see why many people adore this film. Taking the premise of small town killers who despise all outsiders, but instead of dumb horny teenagers or a family, you have a group of soldiers, is interesting and for the most part fairly well handled, especially towards the end when the true cat and mouse game begins. The tension is tangible, and the violence is palpable. The juxtaposition…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 1

  literally a quagmire.

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  Review by Matthew Christman ★★★★

  Bring the War HonHonHon