Biloxi Blues

The year is 1945. Playwright Neil Simon's protagonist "Eugene Morris Jerome" (Matthew Broderick), from "Brighton Beach Memoirs" (1986), is off to join the U.S. Army. First, Mr. Broderick must complete ten weeks of basic training in Biloxi, Mississippi, with psychotic drill sergeant Christopher Walken (as Merwin J. Toomey). Broderick must also learn how to cope and bond with a diverse cast of fellow recruits. They philosophize about life, and fantasize about sex. Broderick's goals are to lose his virginity and fall in love, before shipping off to risk his life…

This is one of Broderick's best roles (he played it successfully on Broadway); and, although he performs it very well, it really isn't the best written part in this comedy-drama (which is part of a Neil Simon trilogy). Broderick has a great dramatic scene with Mr. Walden, near the end of the film; he does his best with an only mildly amusing "loss of innocence" scene, with well-dressed prostitute Park Overall (as Rowena). The best-written role goes to Corey Parker (as Arnold B. Epstein); forsaking some end note about the future of Michael Dolan's "Hennesey" character.

Mr. Simon's written words rise above the overall ordinary direction given the production; he has some very keen, and sometimes subtle, observations about life and love. Note that, upon first viewing, the characters are far more interesting than they initially appear. "Biloxi Blues" is a wistful tribute to the different people circumstances force us to relate to, after leaving home; how they inspire our lives, and become an essential part of our being.

******* Biloxi Blues (3/25/88) Mike Nichols ~ Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken, Corey Parker, Matt Mulhern

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!

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.

This is a fantastic movie that you will want to watch again and again. The story is perfect, the cast is perfect and the acting is perfect. A coming of age story that combines young recruits from all different sections of life that have come together and now have to learn how to live with one another as they go through the rigors of boot camp. Neil Simon always knows how to combine that perfect blend of realism, a comic touch and something you can identify with into everything he writes and makes you feel so comfortable in his story because you feel you're in the story. He makes you want to be become a writer. This is what makes Neil Simon unique. If only every movie could be written this well. This is what great Hollywood film-making is all about.