Fuzzy Green

Some good performances from the two male leads, and good production values on display here both on camera and sound but there is one tiny little problem.

The fact thats its all been pretty much been done before in 'Requiem for a Dream' hampers the actual earnestness of this film. Even the payoff the junkies get sequence is stylistically a direct lift from the Aronofski film/Selby book.

Shame really.

Good film but just not original and doesn't thank the right people in the credits to say there is an homage in play here, so its a pilfer in my language.

Unsettling? Yes Facile? No Unnecessary? Far from it A great film? Absolutely If you take offence at this film then you have missed its point. It is, in some ways, the 'Seven' of rape. Belts you over the head with its ideal, in not very subtle but totally correct filmic language and at the same is a masterpiece of understated editing and superior camera work. Utilises a similar method to that of 'Memento' and dances all over it.

To fly into discourse and break it all down would be futile and unjust.

Watch it.

Absorb it.

And be glad that films of its stature can still be made.

I may have been spoiled by the likes of the more recent Das Boot but this poor old film does not age well at all for me. This has to be the contender along with U-571 for most cliches crammed into a sub film. I actually showed this film to a friend to demonstrate what a cliche was.

Ok it was made a few decades ago but I refuse to believe that any audience at any time did not groan at some of these characters. It is war film by numbers. You know exactly who will die and the 'camaraderie' portrayed is almost insulting. In its defence I'll say that both Das Boot and The Hunt for Red October steal ideas from it but the sets are nasty. The Germans' periscope is quite frankly a wooden box with two clips from a hardware store and a couple of handlebars from some poor childs' bike. I wont even begin to mention the oversized, cobbled together interiors and tiny crew of about seven.