 | Starring: Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty, Anthony Zerbe Director: Karel Reisz Format: Dubbed PAL Widescreen Released: 21 Feb 2005 RRP: Average Rating:  |
Nick Nolte, escaping the potential typecasting of 'Rich Man, Poor Man' & generic-silliness like 'The Deep', made a consious move towards grittier material & bleaker roles. 'Dog Soldiers' would put Nolte on the course that lead to challlenging material like 'Under Fire',Scorsese's episode of 'New York Stories','Afterglow' & 'Mother Night.' There is excellent support here in the form of Tuesday Weld (Once Upon a Time in America, Looking for Mr.Goodbar), Michael Moriarty & Anthony Zerbe.
The film itself is a faithful adaptation of Stone's novel, which captures the bleak post-'Nam/Nixon zeitgeist - centring on a Vietnam Vet (Nolte) attempting to smuggle heroin back into the U.S. & descending into a situation that reminds me of Neil Young's bleak drug-murder song 'Tired Eyes' (from 'Tonight's the Night'). As such it's one of the downer films of the late 70s & anthithesis to the shiny-happy likes of such blockbusters as 'Stars Wars' & 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.' One to file next to 'Blue Collar','Out of the Blue', 'Straight Time','Rolling Thunder' & 'New York, New York.' No happy endings...
'Dog Soldiers' is a welcome issue on DVD, a film that seems overlooked- as is the work of Robert Stone come to think of it! Finallly, it should be noted that as one of the initial works of U.S. cinema that addressed the stigma of Vietnam, alongside 'Hearts & Minds'(1974),'Rolling Thunder'(1977),'The Deer Hunter' (1979) & 'Coming Home' (1978). A bleak cult classic then-
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