Narc
Directed by Joe Carnahan
Starring Jason Patric, Ray Liotta
Buffalo Soldiers
Directed by Gregor Jordan
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Ed Harris
Narc and Buffalo Soldiers, both now playing at the Palace, are throwbacks to the films of the ’70s. Narc deliberately recalls Serpico (1973) and The French Connection (1971) with its gritty tale of crooked cops, and Buffalo Soldiers hearkens back to other military satires Catch-22 and M*A*S*H (both 1970).
While it offers a couple of surprises, Narc intentionally follows the formula established by those tough, intense cop movies of the ’70s every inch of the way. William Friedkin, who directed The French Connection, was an early and vocal proponent of Narc, and it’s easy to see what appealed to him: the conflicted, brooding hero, the grimy, handheld camerawork, the almost existentialist sense of moral ambiguity.
The film certainly packs a punch — it’s extremely violent (and rated R) but also extremely honest about its brutality — there are no cheap thrills in the bloodshed: early on, a pregnant woman gets shot. An almost unrecognisable Jason Patric (miles away from Speed 2: Cruise Control) plays the lead, an undercover narcotics agent who has just recovered from heroin addiction. It’s a good role, and he plays it well, but it’s Ray Liotta, as loose-cannon cop Henry Oak, who really electrifies the screen.
Liotta, like Pacino, or Robert De Niro, or Michael Caine or Jack Nicholson, doesn’t seem to differ much from role to role, but is nonetheless a compulsively watchable screen presence (he’s also terrific in Identity, which is also playing at the moment).
Big-time fame seems to have eluded him (there’s something sinister in his face that perhaps denies him leading-man status) since his early roles in Something Wild (1986) and Goodfellas (1990), but his riveting performance in Narc confirms that he’s at the top of his form. If you enjoy cop movies at all, Narc fulfils its promise all the way as it barrels on down towards its almost claustrophobically intense conclusion.
Narc is director Joe Carnahan’s second film — his first, Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane (1998) was apparently made for $7,000. I haven’t seen it, but Narc is a move in the right direction.
Buffalo Soldiers is also Gregor Jordan’s second film, and a particular disappointment after his first, the very funny Aussie comedy Two Hands (1999).
Buffalo Soldiers’ release was actually pre-empted by Jordan’s third film, Ned Kelly (2003) — it was postponed once, after September 11, and again, when the Iraq war began, due to its anti-military sentiments. I wish I could say that its miserable failure at US box office has been due to the anti-military theme, but unfortunately, the film just isn’t very entertaining.
The first half-hour or so is quite interesting — the film is set in on a US Army base in Germany in 1989, which makes for an original milieu (my father served on a US Army base in Heidelberg during the early ’70s, which added some p e r s o n a l resonance). Its anti-hero, an enlisted man, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is a profiteer with has no compunction about selling drugs or stolen weapons. Phoenix is good, Ed Harris, who plays a milquetoast colonel, gets a few laughs, as does leathery old Scott Glenn.
But the film has an uneasy tone, and never really seems to hit its stride. It’s hard to know where such a promising cast and material and what must have been a fairly expensive production fail. There are some nice touches, like the punk German couple whose Volkswagon gets crushed by a tank, but when the climax comes — a contrived and wrong-headed action scene with drugged-out US soldiers battling each other to the death — the film had lost me.
Brenton Priestley
