Biloxi Blues movie review & film summary (1988)

Nichols has made one good movie since 1970: “Silkwood.” His other screen credits in the last 18 years are “The Day of the Dolphin,” “The Fortune” and “Heartburn.” Now comes “Biloxi Blues,” a film that seems not so much directed as conducted. Nichols is a man who has demonstrated a sharp and critical intelligence. What was there in this project to interest him, other than the opportunity to carry over to the screen his long stage association with Neil Simon? I'm serious.

What really interested him? I'm asking because nothing in this movie seems fresh, well-observed, deeply felt or even much thought about.

Isn't it time for Nichols to start acting more like a real filmmaker, and less like a guy on retainer? Maybe I've seen too many movies about basic training. But from the opening shot (troop train heading south, hero’s face seen in window, winsome narration), I was experiencing deja vu. The elements of the film seem to come from a checklist. The hero’s unit, of course, contains a sadistic bully, a racist, an intellectual and a nice kid who turns out to be gay. The drill sergeant (Christopher Walken) is, of course, borderline crazy. There is, of course, a scene where the hero gets beat up, a scene about Army food, a scene about rugged training marches, and, of course, a scene of sexual initiation with the local prostitute, and another one of love at first sight with a local belle.

All of the scenes are there, just like they are in every basic training movie, and none of them contain any surprises. The movie’s one original note is to make the drill sergeant into a quiet, repressed loony instead of a violent, profane bully. The closest thing to a dramatic high point is the passage where Walken gets drunk and holds a gun to Broderick’s head, but the scene becomes unwound and doesn't pay off. The movie itself doesn't pay off, either; it just ends with that winsome narration.

And even the bottom-line details of the production are disappointing. Broderick and his comrades in basic training seem curiously isolated; there’s no sense of a large Army base around them, no sense of vast events in motion, no sense that he’s a small cog in a large machine. I've seen other movies in which basic training scenes were economized by not hiring lots of extras (Clint Eastwood’s “Heartbreak Ridge” is an example), but never a film in which it seemed so absolutely clear that there was no Army outside.

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