Swamp Fever

By R.S.

SOUTHERN COMFORT Directed by Walter Hill Screenplay by Michael Kane Walter Hill and David Giler Hip deep in a Louisiana swamp, the squad of National Guardsmen gets befuddled. According to the map, there shouldn't be a lake around here. But there is, and unless they steal some boats to cross it, they will not reach their objective in time. This they do, which riles the crafts' Cajun owners, whose tempers are not improved when the weekend soldiers fire blanks at them. Indeed, that is all it takes to turn a war game into a deadly game. The locals are cruel, cunning and know their soggy country. The Guardsmen--except for two, a city sharpster (Keith Carradine) and a tough transfer from Texas (Powers Boothe)--are inept, panicky and, in at least one case, mentally unstable. The odds on surviving the murderously vengeful swamp rats are obviously short--so obvious and so short, in fact, that the film eventually becomes more of an exercise in masochism than suspense.

Thus does the Lost Patrol genre somewhat uneasily meet Deliverance. The film is handsome, has a few good patches of gritty, laconic dialogue and is well crafted by Director Hill, who has proved in such previous straight-line adventures as The Warriors and The Long Riders that he is probably the best stager of action now in practice. It would be nice if, some day, he put some characters on screen who were individuals instead of types and made a film one could care about emotionally instead of technically. --R.S.

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