'Tigerland' is one of the year's best

The Vietnam-era film represents quite a departure for director Joel Schumacher.
In "Tigerland," Irish stage actor Colin Farrell has the kind of breakout role that comes along once in a lifetime. Farrell has the lean, sinewy body and volcanic sexuality of Brad Pitt in "Thelma and Louise," as well as Montgomery Clift's classic vulnerability. As Bozz, a Vietnam-era Texas rebel itching to get out of the army and willing to take along as many grunts with him as he can, Farrell literally bursts off the screen.
"Tigerland"'s director, amazingly enough, is Hollywood vet Joel Schumacher in the sort of career reversal that could alter one's perception of his entire body of work. Were the dully impersonal, big-budget studio films ("Batman and Robin," "A Time to Kill," etc.) he's been churning out recently simply a way of garnering the chips needed to make something as subversive as this?
Shot on a spartan budget in just 30 days using a handheld 16mm camera and mostly natural lighting, "Tigerland" is anything but a run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie.
Plot: Set principally at Fort Polk, La., in the fall of 1971, it chronicles the eight-week infantry training of a bunch of green recruits before being shipped overseas. The last part of their training cycle takes place at Tigerland, specially designed by the Army to approximate actual combat situations they'll encounter in Vietnam.
Refusing to adopt the proper gung-ho spirit ("I'm not quittin', I'm just not playin'"), Bozz's mutinous gameplan backfires when he's appointed platoon leader. Will this intransigent bad boy grow up and rise to the challenge? Or, will he go AWOL the first chance he gets? The ending will surprise even war movie aficionados.
A harrowing combination of Robert Altman's "Streamers" and the first-half of Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket," "Tigerland" ranked No. 3 on my 2000 10-best list, just behind "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Traffic." Thanks to distributor 20th Century Fox's boneheaded decision not to expand its release beyond New York and L.A., few moviegoers had the chance to see this unexpected masterpiece in theaters. Don't miss your chance to catch it on home video.