SAIGON (1988) A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 1998
Late 1980s witnessed huge avalanche of "high concept" cop movies, inspired by the success of the first LETHAL WEAPON. Of course, very few had any chance to match Donner's success and most of them turned out to be unwatchable garbage. On the other hand, some of those movies, although less successful, might look interesting even today. Nice example is SAIGON, cop movie with the most preposterous "high concept" of the era (even more outrageous than RED HEAT with Soviet policeman taking out criminals on American streets). Obligatory cop combination is made of Buck McGriff (Willem Dafoe) and Albaby Perkins (Gregory Hines) - two soldiers who work as plain clothes military policemen in war time Vietnam. Their thankless job is to wear plain clothes and catch deserters, drug dealers and other misbehaving servicemen in the streets and slimy bars of Saigon. One night they are called to investigate the murder of the local prostitute whose last customer had the insignia of high ranking U.S. officer. Their investigation reveal the whole series of similar murders, but before they can find the identity of the killer, they realise that their own lives are in danger.
Script by Cameron Crowe and Jack Thibeau is a textbook example of police movie clich‚s. Almost every element of is here - two policemen who bend the rules, their investigation is against all odds, their superiors are inimical and drowned in red tape, the main bad guy is someone predictably nice in the beginning of the film, and their dull police routine is made interesting by a couple of standard shootouts and car chases. Even the obligatory love interest is thrown in the mix - in the form of a nun (played by Amanda Pays with obvious lack of interest); apart from (luckily) unresolved sexual tension with McGriff, she also provides some cheap (and in the final result quite repulsive) elements of comic relief (like the scene when she wears habit and discusses the case in the middle of sleazy strip bar).
Under all those stereotypes, SAIGON hides some interesting themes and subplots that could have been explored by more ambitious filmmakers. First, by presenting wartime Saigon as modern equivalent of Sodoma and Gomorrah, place of utter depravity, corruption and immense poverty, Crowe underlines the fact seldom noted in Hollywood movies dealing with Vietnam War - that the Vietnamese people are actually those who suffered the most in that grim episode of recent U.S. history. Another theme is more universal - the importance of individual life and morality in war. McGriff and Perkins are boy scouts who decide to pursue justice disgusted with the deaths of few unimportant civilians, while in the same time they witness the deaths of hundreds of their comrades every week. What forces them to pursue such uncompromising and unpopular course of action (instead of simply turning the other way, like most of people in their situation would) is never properly explained (although the lack of explanation works better than implausible explanation for similar behaviour in Litvak's NIGHT OF THE GENERALS). That escalates into almost surrealistic notion that for the cause of "justice" they should even co-operate with their mortal enemies from Viet Cong. Motives of the Viet Cong in helping them are even less explained, and that is another big flaw of this movie. Finally, SAIGON presents another disturbing truth - that the standards of morality in war totally differ from those same standards in peace. This is illustrated in the most powerful episode of the whole movie, in which U.S. colonel Armstrong (Scott Glenn in one of the most impressive roles of his career) reveals himself as sadistic pervert who leads small army of bloodthirsty fanatics; but that officer and his unit are actually praised by their superiors for their exceptional efficiency at the battlefield. One of the great ironies of Armstrong's situation lies in the fact that his psychopathic tendencies are welcome in the savagery of war, and in the same time condemned in the "civilised" peaceful environment.
Unfortunately, Crowe didn't use the opportunity to dig into this themes further. Instead he left them as a side element to the formulaic police thriller, movie we should remember by its unused potential instead of its own quality.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
Review written on December 12th 1998
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Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
Fido: 2:381/100
E-mail: dragan.antulov@st.tel.hr
dragan.antulov@altbbs.fido,hr
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