Tigerland
It's hard to believe that the director of this spare, stripped-down character drama also made the overblown Batman and Robin, but Joel Schumacher is obviously revelling in going back to basics. He did it first with Flawless, about the relationship between a homophobe and a drag queen, and now with Tigerland, about infantry conscripts undergoing jungle combat training before being shipped out to Vietnam. Colin Farrell, before Steven Spielberg's Minority Report and blockbuster Daredevil catapulted him on to the A list, plays the charismatic lead, a disruptive dissenter who wants out of the army and who'll do anything to get his wish. Other relative unknowns play the recruits and instructors — mummy's boys and bully boys — who get caught up in the unexpected consequences of Farrell's uncivil disobedience. Determinedly low budget and filmed sometimes confusingly in an in-your-face, almost documentary style, this is potent screen drama with a genuinely real feel about it.
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