By PETER CALDER
(Herald rating: * * * )
A director best-known for Batman sequels and the provocative Falling Down, Schumacher here essays a low-budget boot-camp drama which is self-consciously raw (in both style and content) and quite deliberately devoid of star power.
It's shot in 16mm with a jerky handheld camera and the film is processed to be coarse and grainy which lends proceedings a documentary urgency and, crucially, pins it to our visual memory of Vietnam War coverage on television.
The soldiers in this movie aren't in Indo-China but are headed there via the Tigerland of the title, a training ground which is variously described as "the stateside province of Vietnam" and "the second-worst place on Earth."
When we meet them (in Fort Polk, a Louisiana army base) it's 1971 and they're training for a war which, on the battlefield of public opinion at least, America is losing. Bozz (Farrell, an Irishman who makes a commendably credible Texan) is the renegade of the intake, a cheerfully cheeky sceptic whose street-smarts lend him star status with them but drive his superiors wild with profane rage.
Bozz, who reads antiwar novels on manoeuvres and gets smart with sadistic sergeants, is something of a cinematic cliche; like Jack Nicholson's McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he is our cue to revile the establishment. And as other character types slot into place around him - his blood-brother buddy Paxton (Davis), the decent weakling Miter (Collins), the emotionally musclebound psycho Wilson (Whigham) - the carpentry of the construction is clumsy and obvious.
That said, Schumacher directs with enormous flair. The film's gritty naturalism is skilfully executed and and the performances are understated and compelling - the ensemble work often feels theatrical, an observation I intend as a compliment. But, treading in the footsteps of everything from Full Metal Jacket to The Thin Red Line, Tigerland offers nothing much new - and asks us to wade through a lot of mud and blood to find it.
Cast: Colin Farrell, Matthew Davis, Clifton Collins jun, Shea Whigham
Director: Joel Schumacher
Rating: R16 (violence, offensive language, sex scenes)
Running time: 113 mins
Screening: Rialto
Tigerland
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