Buffalo Soldiers

The victim of cosmically unfortunate timing, this dark military satire based on Robert O'Conner's 1993 novel secured distribution the day before the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center. Australian director Gregor Jordan's adaptation of O'Connor's book is scabrous, misanthropic and painfully aware that idle hands are the devil's workshop, especially when they're holding guns. Posted to a base near Mannheim, Germany, during the 1980s, supply clerk Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix), who enlisted as an alternative to jail, scams and schemes his way through the tedium of peacetime military service. His fellow soldiers are, with few exceptions, a sorry assortment of...