Dogfight

Set during the summer of 1963, Birdlace (River Phoenix) is one of four Marine buddies, the four B's, so named for all having last names starting with the letter B. Their "mission" is to have a wild last night on the town in San Francisco before shipping out to Vietnam. The highlight is to be the title party, for which the Marines search for the homeliest women in town to bring as dates and compete for a cash prize. Birdlace's selection turns out to be Rose (Lili Taylor), a coffee shop waitress tending towards chubbiness who dreams of becoming a folk singer. Taking a liking to Rose, Birdlace makes some feeble last-minute attempts to steer her away form the party but to no avail.

At the party, Rose proves too cute and personable to be a serious contender against competition including a wall-eyed brunette missing most of her front teeth and a male transvestite. But she manages to come in second when too many mai-tais send her reeling to the restroom, where she overhears the details about the true nature of the party. She blows up at Birdlace and stomps off. But a remorseful Birdlace leaves his buddies behind to follow her home and make amends, taking her out to crash a fashionable restaurant and visit Rose's favorite folkie haunt before they wind up back at her place.

The next morning she gives him her address, but he tears it up and throws it out the window before he reaches the base with his buddies, who return from a drunken evening that included getting bees tattooed on their arms, one of them getting two for their missing friend. Three years later, during the 1966 Summer of Love, Birdlace returns from Vietnam alone, his three buddies having been killed, two while saving his life. Birdlace has four bees tattooed on his arm before a tearful reunion with Rose in now-hippiefied Frisco.

Almost anyone else but Savoca would probably have begun their film where hers ends, by exploring the rich dramatic and cinematic possibilities of a returning soldier coping with a new life stateside with a peacenik lover during the tumultuous 60s. However, as in TRUE LOVE, Savoca is not interested in the world outside her characters except to the extent that it impacts on and shapes their lives.

Despite being set in San Francisco, DOGFIGHT was filmed mostly on soundstages, leaving Savoca compelled to steer her characters past recreations of famed Frisco landmarks to remind us of the setting. We're kept abreast of current events not through dialogue but through cutaways to TV broadcasts. The effect is to give DOGFIGHT an old-fashioned studio look and feeling, which is fitting since its subject--how two very different people come together and fall in love--is itself very old-fashioned. (Indeed, it is so old it's new, as reviewer raves for how "new" and "refreshing" TRUE LOVE was can attest.) Lacking the rough edges and Bronx street authenticity of TRUE LOVE, which made Savoca seem at the time a kinder and gentler Martin Scorsese, DOGFIGHT seems more artificial and less spontaneous, again like old-fashioned Hollywood romances.

But what really is most refreshing about Savoca is that she doesn't condescend to her characters, the usual fatal pitfall for filmmakers undertaking small-scaled stories about average people. Instead, she's remarkably generous and evenhanded, bringing a loving skepticism to Rose's folkie aspirations and finding an unexpected humanity in the Marines' rough camaraderie. Savoca really seems to be exploring these people and their relationships rather than standing aloof and analyzing them. The result is that DOGFIGHT feels unpredictable even though it is setbound and nothing about it is particularly surprising from a plot or character standpoint.

It helps that, again as she did in TRUE LOVE, Savoca has assembled a terrific cast, headed by the gifted River Phoenix and the talented Taylor, and made them work together as a lively ensemble. The combination doesn't make DOGFIGHT a great film, but it does make it a most engaging one. (Profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment