Horse Balm and Bull Pucky

Buffalo Soldiers, a self-proCLAIMED satire about American soldiers running amok in peace-time Germany, has baggage aplenty going in. In honor of our glorious adventure in Iraq, the movie was postponed from its projected spring release, apparently less at the behest of the terrible twins Disney and Miramax than of its young Australian director, Gregor Jordan, who nonetheless professes himself wounded at the threat posed to freedom of speech by military bigwigs who wrote in objecting to the movie’s negative depiction of American soldiers.

Worse yet, the movie aspires to profundity. Based on a novel by Robert O’Connor about late–Cold War American soldiers rotting of tedium in a German barracks, Buffalo Soldiers is inspired, if that’s the word, by Nietzsche’s observation that “When there is peace, the warlike man attacks himself.” Joaquin Phoenix plays Specialist Ray Elwood, a wily supply sergeant who staves off boredom by organizing a black market in everything from Mop & Glow to AK-47s, right under the nose of his good-natured but clueless commanding officer (Ed Harris, against the grain). When a far savvier new top sergeant with the strenuously winking name of Robert Lee (Scott Glenn) shows up to take the helm, Elwood tries to keep his business afloat while wooing Lee’s daughter, a self-possessed nymph (and, it is snidely implied, nympho) played by Anna Paquin.

As a portrait of what soldiers will do once a war is won, Buffalo Soldiers is probably close to the mark. Time magazine recently had a cover on lootings by American soldiers in Baghdad, and almost any self-respecting foreign correspondent will tell you that a certain amount of pillage invariably follows a war. As social satire, though, the movie is a nonstarter, completely lacking in the zany lunacy of M*A*S*H and Dr. Strangelove, or the whacked savagery of Catch-22. For reasons that never become apparent, Jordan elects to play the growing mayhem straight, and the movie drags its toneless, spiritless way to the edifying conclusion that there is “no peace anywhere.” How true. How banal.

SEABISCUIT | Written and directed by GARY ROSS | Based on the book by LAURA HILLENBRAND | Produced by KATHLEEN KENNEDY, FRANK MARSHALL, ROSS and JANE SINDEL Released by Universal Pictures | Citywide

BUFFALO SOLDIERS | Directed by GREGOR JORDAN | Written by JORDAN, ERIC AXEL WEISS and NORA MacCOBY | Based on the book by ROBERT O’CONNOR | Produced by RAINER GRUPE and ARIANE MOODY | Released by Miramax Films | At the ArcLight, Westside Pavilion and Mann Criterion