An Outstanding Film: Highly Recommended!

********WARNING********SPOILERS BELOW********

********WARNING********SPOILERS BELOW********

********WARNING********SPOILERS BELOW********

This is an outstanding film, and totally unique.

People are saying this is some kind of a ripoff of Coolhand Luke and other films, but I just don't see that. I haven't seen any film that is like this at all.

Before this---which I only saw in 2010, ten years after it came out---I'd never seen any Schumacher films that I'd say anything good about.

I taped this only because Colin Ferrell was in it (he was very good in Hart's War, so I figured he knew how to play a war story), and I think I missed the Schumacher name in my TV tape, and after watching it for 30-40 minutes, I was wondering if this was directed by Ridley Scott, or by Tony Scott or someone else trying to look like Ridley Scott. The directorial style here is totally Ridley Scott through and through and through. That said, most of Ridley Scott's films bite ass and don't have 1/10th the acting or dialog Tigerland has, and tend to lean on props, explosions, and fancy locations.

This movie has a lot of very good acting and the writing is exceptional. In that regard, and it many others, it is like a play. This film is almost 100% dialog driven, which is rare for a war movie.

As a war movie, this is also totally unique. There is no war in this film, no battles, and the whole thing takes place in the US. Not a single person gets killed in this film! Some people deride this film for all those reasons, but I don't buy that. This is 100% totally a war film. War is the total state of mind of everyone in this film, and the morbid fear of death is all around. People are being destroyed by this fear of death in this film, even though actual death is 10,000 miles off. That is what makes this like a play, and a very good one.

Military types have bashed this film all over, and rightfully so, but let's put that into context; Hollywood has never been able to make a war movie that could satisfy these types. I hear 50,000 inaccuracies cited on even the best of the war films, any maybe 49,999 of those go right over my head. By now, I believe it to be impossible to make a film that is up to their standards.

Some people even discount this as a war movie, saying that it can't be a war movie, because it is clearly an anti-war movie.

How does that make it not a war movie?

Is a war movie, by definition, one made by people promoting the virtue and righteousness of a war and made for viewing solely by people who agree with the pro-war stance of the studio and director?

This is an idiotic standard that would be satisfied only by Donald Rumsfeld directing a film for a private audience that consists only of Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz!

Inaccuracies and things that never would have happened in real life (and never in our army) abound in this film, but I don't think that this affects the quality of the film. If anything, it is so much of that which warps it into another dimension. This movie creates its own environment and lives there.

This is a film made by white liberals for white liberals, no doubt, but that doesn't take away its cinematic value. By now, we need to accept that, on the whole, films are made by white liberals, and many of the award-seeking films in recent years have been films made for viewing and adoration by white liberals.

You can't really overthink each step taken in this movie. For example, a lot of people are going round and round trying to analyze one tidbit from this film where the main character is on leave and pays someone $150 for something sneaky, then you later see him back on base, sneaking off to sabotage the secure perimeter of the range, then sneaking off in the night, escaping through that hole, and getting into the waiting van driven by the person who had been paid the $150 in advance to do that. These guys aren't in Alcatraz, the way you desert the army is you leave! If that were his goal, he'd have left on his base leave, not paid someone to break him out after he got back! This is a plot gimmick of the film and is what it is. It adds to the film, but you can't try to make literal sense of it.

The main character is a anti-hero/superhero that isn't really a person who would live in real life, and somehow this entire platoon is a mad pack of whiny bitches, somehow hand picked by the selective service for their lack of support for the war, and each one of them is damned near ready to kill himself to avoid going into this war. This is nonsense, but you have to let it go and enjoy the dramatic tension.

Please don't avoid this film because it was directed by Joel Schumacher and you hate Joel Schumacher. If I'd have known it was his, I'd have avoided it, and I would have missed out on a good thing.

Tigerland is an outstanding film that could not have been made any better. It is a shame that it is all but totally unknown.