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[Short Reviews]

TIGERLAND

Who could have guessed that Joel Schumacher, the auteur behind such turkeys as Batman & Robin and 8 MM, would be responsible for the least-appreciated movie of 2000? Tigerland, with its no-name cast, minimal budget, and downbeat subject, was no match for such bloated blockbusters as Gladiator and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but it marks a return to the gritty and exuberant filmmaking of Hollywood’s shortlived ’70s renaissance.

Which is when the film is set — in 1971, in Fort Polk, Louisiana, where a bunch of grunts unfortunate enough to be caught up in the waning days of the Vietnam War undergo the brutish, simulated battlefield of " Tigerland " — the " second worst place on earth " — to prepare them for the real thing. Private Bozz (Colin Farrell), for one, can’t take it seriously. Like a refugee from Catch 22 or One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he uses his considerable wit, savvy, and charm to undermine authority and avoid responsibility .

Among his talents is finding ways for the disgruntled and unfit to escape the service. He can’t do the same for himself, and therein lies the film’s heavyhanded irony and sentimental softness. But these weaknesses (Paxton, the college-boy voiceover narrator who enlisted to get experience for his novel, is a bit much as well) fade before the muscular cinéma-vérité style and the taut ensemble acting, which, like the first half of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, re-create the sweat, dread, and debasement of boot camp. And Farrell, who won the 2000 Best Actor Award from the Boston Society of Film Critics, starts out like a stripling trying to decide whether he wants to grow up to be Russell Crowe or George Clooney and ends up as the most charismatic new film presence of the past year.

BY PETER KEOUGH





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