HOME |  CULT MOVIES | COMPETITIONS | ADVERTISE |  CONTACT US |  ABOUT US
 
 
 
Newest Reviews
American Fiction
Poor Things
Thunderclap
Zeiram
Legend of the Bat
Party Line
Night Fright
Pacha, Le
Kimi
Assemble Insert
Venus Tear Diamond, The
Promare
Beauty's Evil Roses, The
Free Guy
Huck and Tom's Mississippi Adventure
Rejuvenator, The
Who Fears the Devil?
Guignolo, Le
Batman, The
Land of Many Perfumes
Cat vs. Rat
Tom & Jerry: The Movie
Naked Violence
Joyeuses Pacques
Strangeness, The
How I Became a Superhero
Golden Nun
Incident at Phantom Hill
Winterhawk
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Maigret Sets a Trap
B.N.A.
Hell's Wind Staff, The
Topo Gigio and the Missile War
Battant, Le
Penguin Highway
Cazadore de Demonios
Snatchers
Imperial Swordsman
Foxtrap
   
 
Newest Articles
3 From Arrow Player: Sweet Sugar, Girls Nite Out and Manhattan Baby
Little Cat Feat: Stephen King's Cat's Eye on 4K UHD
La Violence: Dobermann at 25
Serious Comedy: The Wrong Arm of the Law on Blu-ray
DC Showcase: Constantine - The House of Mystery and More on Blu-ray
Monster Fun: Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror on Blu-ray
State of the 70s: Play for Today Volume 3 on Blu-ray
The Movie Damned: Cursed Films II on Shudder
The Dead of Night: In Cold Blood on Blu-ray
Suave and Sophisticated: The Persuaders! Take 50 on Blu-ray
Your Rules are Really Beginning to Annoy Me: Escape from L.A. on 4K UHD
A Woman's Viewfinder: The Camera is Ours on DVD
Chaplin's Silent Pursuit: Modern Times on Blu-ray
The Ecstasy of Cosmic Boredom: Dark Star on Arrow
A Frosty Reception: South and The Great White Silence on Blu-ray
You'll Never Guess Which is Sammo: Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon on Blu-ray
Two Christopher Miles Shorts: The Six-Sided Triangle/Rhythm 'n' Greens on Blu-ray
Not So Permissive: The Lovers! on Blu-ray
Uncomfortable Truths: Three Shorts by Andrea Arnold on MUBI
The Call of Nostalgia: Ghostbusters Afterlife on Blu-ray
Moon Night - Space 1999: Super Space Theater on Blu-ray
Super Sammo: Warriors Two and The Prodigal Son on Blu-ray
Sex vs Violence: In the Realm of the Senses on Blu-ray
What's So Funny About Brit Horror? Vampira and Bloodbath at the House of Death on Arrow
Keeping the Beatles Alive: Get Back
   
 
  Biloxi Blues Basic Humour
Year: 1988
Director: Mike Nichols
Stars: Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken, Matt Mulhern, Corey Parker, Markus Flanagan, Casey Siemaszko, Michael Dolan, Penelope Ann Miller, Park Overall, Alan Pottinger, Mark Evan Jacobs, David Kienzle, Matthew Kimbrough
Genre: Comedy, DramaBuy from Amazon
Rating:  6 (from 1 vote)
Review: Eugene Jerome (Matthew Broderick) recalls his army days, which happened as the Second World War was drawing to a close. A New York boy, he was drafted and sent down South to the Mississippi, Biloxi to be exact, to attend a boot camp with a bunch of other trainees, yet as he sat on the train on the journey there he felt more alone than he ever had in his life, for he didn’t have anything in common with his fellow recruits. As he watched the others argue, sleep and play pranks he couldn’t believe that he was supposed to share quarters with these people, never mind watch himself and them transform into a fighting force to defeat the Nazis or the Imperialist Japanese, depending on where they were sent…

Biloxi Blues was the middle part of a nostalgic trilogy of plays by Neil Simon, who even including William Shakespeare is the most successful playwright of all time as far as the ratio of plays written to screen adaptations go. They were each concentrating on a rites of passage he went through as a young man, and this was his military experience, or a loose rendition of as much as he could recollect at any rate, and on the stage provided him with another hit, so naturally the movie rights were snapped up and Simon penned the script. Broderick had worked with him before in the theatre, though not on this, but had a pretty good idea of what was required in a role that would see him move away from teenage movies.

Oddly, while he seemed to have it all sorted out as a teenage in film, even if he was playing younger than his years, once he turned to adult acting parts he found himself stuck not with the Ferris Bueller smart alecs but a more worried, harried demeanour, which likely explains why he preferred to pursue the theatre for more job satisfaction as the decades went by – The Producers musical was a notable success, for instance. Back at Biloxi Blues, we could see him as a performer in transition, and he was undoubtedly sensitive in his portrayal of the surrogate Neil Simon that Eugene was intended to be, though the fact remained this was a less than showy role for him, as the real scene stealer here was none other than Christopher Walken.

Walken was the sergeant, Toomey, in charge of whipping these young men into hardened soldiers, and worked with Simon and director Mike Nichols to mould the character into something he could make his own – there was little doubt of that, yet if too often as his career went on he could be accused of showing up and quirking up the place when filmmakers didn’t quite know how to guide him and allowed him to do his own thing, for better or worse, here he was provided with one of his highlights. And yet, the odd aspect to this was he was not particularly lauded for it, nor remembered much for that matter, in spite of creating not some cliché of a foul-mouthed drill sergeant as R. Lee Ermey embodied to great effect the previous year in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.

Nope, Toomey was very much Walken’s own creation, with help from his writer and director, a forceful, by the book yet somehow difficult to predict individual who it turns out may be more unstable than any of his underlings realised. It may be damning with faint praise to call him very interesting but that’s precisely what he was, and the tension in the scenes he was in was considerably increased by his tightly wound but hard to pin down danger, as he would be to the trainees when they don’t know what they could say that was correct. One of those who wasn’t bothered in the slightest was Epstein (Corey Parker), the movie’s rebel (Eugene didn’t fit that persona), a Jewish intellectual who quietly but sarcastically protests having to take part and ends up spending most of the time cleaning the latrines because Toomey doesn’t know what else to do with him. That it was Eugene who has the final confrontation with the sergeant tended to muffle the ending, but with its musing on sexuality and discipline, this was more contemplative than many a Simon script, to its benefit. Music by Georges Delerue.
Reviewer: Graeme Clark

 

This review has been viewed 4433 time(s).

As a member you could Rate this film

 

Mike Nichols  (1931 - 2014)

German-born director in America who was part of a successful comedy act with Elaine May. He then turned to theatre and film, directing sharply observed dramas and comedies like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, Catch-22 and the controversial Carnal Knowledge.

After the flop Day of the Dolphin, his output became patchier, but The Fortune, Silkwood, Biloxi Blues, Working Girl, Postcards from the Edge, Wolf and Charlie Wilson's War all have their merits. On television, he directed the award-winning miniseries Angels in America.

 
Review Comments (0)


Untitled 1

Login
  Username:
 
  Password:
 
   
 
Forgotten your details? Enter email address in Username box and click Reminder. Your details will be emailed to you.
   

Latest Poll
Which star probably has psychic powers?
Laurence Fishburne
Nicolas Cage
Anya Taylor-Joy
Patrick Stewart
Sissy Spacek
Michelle Yeoh
Aubrey Plaza
Tom Cruise
Beatrice Dalle
Michael Ironside
   
 
   

Recent Visitors
  Stuart Watmough
Paul Shrimpton
Darren Jones
Mary Sibley
Enoch Sneed
Mark Le Surf-hall
  Louise Hackett
Andrew Pragasam
   

 

Last Updated: