neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Buffalo Soldiers
	Gregor Jordan Joaquin Phoenix, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Anna Paquin, Gabriel Mann, Leon Robinson, Dean Stockwell, Elizabeth McGovern 2001		In search of an antidote to the wave of jingoism that has suffused the United States since 9/11? Take a look at writer/director Gregor Jordan's "Buffalo Soldiers," a dark, violent comedy that's tough, wise and so vicious about corruption in America's peacetime army that the studio refused to release it until two years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The implication was that the film would be bad for national morale, but the script's anti-hero Ray Elwood, a glib, enterprising military clerk played with calculating bonhomie by Joaquin Phoenix, embodies capitalism in action. Elwood, stationed at a U.S. Army base in West Germany as the Berlin Wall falls, has access to government-issue goods and runs a profitable black market trade in anything from kitchen cleanser to artillery. He manipulates everyone around him — the locals, his fellow enlisted men and the clueless camp commander (Ed Harris) — until hardened, by-the-book Sergeant Lee (Scott Glenn) transfers to the base. Lee resolves to bust Elwood, even as cocksure Elwood decides to seduce the sergeant's desirable daughter (Anna Paquin). A conflagration is inevitable, and "Buffalo Soldiers" stampedes to an explosive climax.