Summer Soldiers

This strange, interesting, gentle, and intensely contemporary film (for its time) explores the relationships between the dedicated soldiers and the dropouts during the Vietnam conflict. Cross cultures come into play as well in the picture as Japanese "host families" afford a succession of one-night shelters to GIs who have elected to desert from the US armed forces while on leave in Tokyo. Sykes, whose motive for deserting is no more than exhaustion, is juxtaposed against Antonacci, an antiwar ideolog. The Japanese "Deserters' Aid Committee" members interact with the two, with one another, and with other deserters in interesting, telling, and often amusing ways. Th...