‘Courage is when you’re the only guy who knows how shit-scared you really are…’
While it’s difficult to forgive recently departed director Joel Schumacher for putting nipples on Batman, he did make some great movies aside from his ill-advised brush with the Caped Crusader. Flatliners, Falling Down and A Time to Kill are all underrated classics, and Schumacher’s work with Colin Farrell (Phonebooth and Tigerland) is well worth seeking out also. Tigerland is a Vietnam movie that is indebted to Full Metal Jacket, Apocolypse Now, Platoon and pretty much every other Vietnam movie ever whilst still being entirely its own thing…
We follow a group of recruits, some of them conscripted, some of them volunteers, as they make their way to Louisiana’s infamous Tigerland Army Base – the last stop before Vietnam. Farrell plays Pvt. Roland Bozz, a kind of Randle McMurphy figure, a fly in the ointment of his commanding officers who still commands the respect of most of his fellow recruits (aside from Pvt. Wilson (Shea Whigham) – Bozz’s mortal enemy). Pvt. Jim Paxton (Matthew Davis) is Bozz’s closest ally, despite having very different ideological beliefs, and we watch as the two of them navigate Tigerland together.
While this film doesn’t really look or feel like a Vietnam movie, despite the use of grainy film stock to create a more authentic feel, it doesn’t really matter by the film’s conclusion. Farrell’s wild-eyed, big-hearted performance makes it impossible not to root for him, and by the end, I was fully invested. I could have watched a 10-part Band of Brothers–style deep dive into these characters and still never got bored.
As with Sam Mendes’ Jarhead, this is a war film that doesn’t actually feature any war. In the end, as ever, it’s not the war itself that is the interesting thing. It’s the humanity.
