Biloxi Blues

OK, we all have our favourite poignant movies right?....you know the type - the ones that hold you in rapture - time and again, because it speaks to you on a very personal level and effortlessly touches some part of your emotions that you keep hidden from the world - evoking deeply sad or blissfully happy memories from our own passage through life. Biloxi Blues is that movie for me.

Which of us do not carry emotional scars from; Our first time away from home. Our first time interacting with a group of strangers in a mutual climate. Our first sexual encounter. Our fist kiss. Our first love. Our first brush with authority. Our first glimpse at death.

Biloxi Blues is a movie that embraces many of the "rites of passage" that we all face in life and deals with them using comedy as a foil to gently explore them, without diminishing their poignancy. Neil Simon is peerless in this. The casting is faultless. The acting is immaculate. The humor is intelligent.

If you haven't seen this movie, do so. You can thank me later.

Well I'm disappointed. :-( This film deserves much more than a 6.6 rating! If you watch Brighton Beach Memoires you will love this film. Personally the 1st film was better but maybe because I could relate to a younger Jerome. But this film, oh yes! Christopher Walken you are my GOD! He is so funny in this film in my view! The way he makes the wise-cracking Jerome (Broderick) and fellow NY boy Epstein (Corey) is great. Ok he is a nut but that is Walken- he would be the worst Army officer I would want! Great film- the scene with the 'escort' is great! "You're not breathing! Breathe!" Unbelievable! It is also heart-warming and I love it! Overall I must give it a 8.5/10. Give it a try dont let the 6.6 rating fool you! HO NO!

Biloxi Blues is a wonderful character comedy with strong dramatic scenes as well. Eugene Jerome (Matthew Broderick) is an anti-hero, who is typically concerned with making wisecracks, rebelling against the rigid drill Sergeant (Christopher Walken), and talking about wanting to become a writer. Similar to the dark pathos of characters in Catch-22, Biloxi Blues exposes men in the service who do not want to be there, who are incompetent, and basically as far from battlefield heroism as you can imagine. Mike Nichols directs, and his comedic and dramatic pace is pitched perfectly for the film.

The movie has quotable lines throughout. But if you are looking for a typical war movie, this is not for you. There are no heros, at least in the conventional sense, as the story focuses upon the dusty boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi. The story does deal with sharp internal conflicts, and the cultural topics addressed emerge strongly against the backdrop of one of the US's most traditional institutions: the military. Although it has been over fifteen years since the release of the movie, the conflict in the movie feels timely and relevant for today's world. It's the type of tight, well-written comedy that rarely exists in current cinema.

The timing for my catching of this flick couldn't have been more appropriate. I caught it with a few of my squadmates on a 72-hour pass at the post theater on Ft. Benning, in the middle of my 12-weeks of basic training and infantry school. It was the summer of 1988, "Biloxi" had just hit the screens, and it was the hottest summer on record in 25-years in the already quite sultry city of Columbus, Georgia (about two hours south of Atlanta).

Just imagine, an army base theater -- that had changed very little from its WW2 days -- filled with 200+ Army recruits in uniform, on pass, watching a movie about Army recruits on pass! It was a hilarious deja vu, although I suspect that such irony was lost on the majority of the individuals present that night.

Anyways, my favorite scenes in the movie include the following: Matthew Broderick (as Pvt. Eugene Jerome) moving through the chow line at breakfast for the first time, when the army cook slings some unmentionable godforsaken gloop on his stainless steel G.I. mess tray. The look on Eugene's face is worth its weight in gold as it was almost as if he had been insulted and violated at the same time. (This is especially funny for anyone who has ever stood in a messhall chowline and eaten army "food" before.)

My next favorite scene was when Eugene makes up a game with his bunkmates one night, about what they would do with the last 72 hours of their lives. What every man reveals about himself is not only telling, but an ominous harbinger of what is to come. Hennesey, for example, asks to be with his family. The others scoff. Little do they know, however, that soon enough, even that modest hope will seem like a pipedream to the starcrossed Hennesey.

The funniest aspects of Neil Simon's mostly autobiographically inspired play though, is his comedic depiction of the inevitable culture clash that invariably occurs when the New York quasi-intellectualism and Jewish urbane sensibility that Eugene Jerome and Arnold Epstein are products of, confronts head on the southern white-redneck military subculture that Sgt. Toomey represents.

This theme especially struck a chord with me, having come down to Georgia for boot camp from Chicago that summer. It was quite a culture shock for me upon my first visit to the south. when I stepped off the bus at Ft. Benning, as I quickly had to get myself accustomed to the almost incomprehensible southern accents, idiosyncratic differences in attitude and weird regional expressions employed by our mostly colorful, yet totally profane and predominantly redneck drill sergeants at Ft. Benning.

Another aspect about this film that touched me personally is the fact that it was filmed filmed almost entirely at Ft. Chaffee in Ft. Smith Arkansas, where I had trained extensively when I was in the U.S. Army. From WW1 to the early 1990s, Ft. Chaffee was an active U.S. Army reservation that has since been mothballed.

Being able to see scenes of Ft. Chaffee, especially the exterior and interior shots of Chaffee's vintage WW2-era barracks on my very rare DVD version which I am most fortunate to have, always brings back some rather fond -- and not so fond memories -- of the times I spent at Chaffee. This movie mostly reminds me of all those days and nights I spent training in those chigger and tick-ridden forests, doing PT around post, and living in those godforsaken WW2-era barracks.

Hats off to a great five-star WW2 coming-of-age flick!

It seems strange to say this about a movie that has very few moments of high drama and virtually no moments of great excitement, but "Biloxi Blues" has a strangely compelling quality to it. Once you begin to watch, you'll stay with this through to the end. Director Mike Nichols does an excellent job of bringing the viewer into the lives of the disparate group of young men who find themselves suddenly soldiers in 1945, facing the prospect of being sent to the Pacific to fight and quite possibly die for their country. From the very beginning, we want to know about these men: who they are, what makes them tick, and, most important - what's going to happen to them?

There are several fine performances in this movie. Matthew Broderick is excellent (he seems to have a knack for military roles, as in both this and "Glory") as Private Eugene Jerome, a young, idealistic Jewish teenager, just out of high school, who dreams of being a writer rather than a soldier. Much of the movie is seen through his eyes as we see him come of age in many different ways. There's great humour involved as he loses his virginity with the understanding prostitute Rowena (Park Overall). Eugene is simply a likable young man who we enjoy watching grow up. Corey Parker put on a strong performance in a supporting role as Private Albert Epstein, who challenges military authority from Day 1. Another scene of brief humour is when Epstein presents a note from his doctor in New York, asking that he be excused from having to eat army food. Also offering a strong performance is Christopher Walken as the slightly off-balance Sargeant Toomey, who drives his platoon relentlessly.

If you're looking for a classic war movie, you'll want to avoid this. But if you're interested in a story about genuine people, give it a try. I enjoyed this movie very much, and would rate it as a 7/10.