It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

My best guess is that this is a statement being made by Walter Hill with regards to the Vietnam War. Movies like Platoon also depicted this kind of mindless idiocy on the part of US troops, including violent or threatening behaviour towards innocent civilians. It probably happened lots in Namm...and to what extent, probably still happens today.Totally mixed feelings watching this flick. US troops are supposed to be the good guys, but because of my utter disgust of their characters and behaviour, I eagerly anticipate for at least some of them to be "offed" by the indigenous civilians that they wronged.After being hit with various boobie traps, attack dogs, and even fatal casualties due to fighting amongst themselves (meatheads), without disclosing the ending, the only soldiers left in trying to escape the swamps (and their Cajun pursuers) are the only ones that you placed any sympathy with and had half a brain.If not for the production quality and all-star cast, I would have rated this movie much lower. As it stands, it is actually a pretty decent movie, but the annoying factor is fairly high.

In 1973, a regiment of the Louisiana National Guard travel out to the remote bayou for a routine training mission. The men, including Spencer (Carradine), Hardin (Boothe), Reece (Ward), Poole (Coyote), and Cribbs (Carter) have differing attitudes towards life and their situation. It all seems simple enough, but when they accidentally draw the ire of some local Cajun folk, the crafty Cajuns start killing them off one by one as punishment for their perceived incursion into their territory. Not to mention their capture of a local man, simply known as Trapper (James). Now trying to survive with limited resources in a harsh and unfamiliar environment, our National Guardsmen literally have to fight their own war at home. Who will die, who will survive, and who will live to find out the true meaning of SOUTHERN COMFORT? Only the genius of the great Walter Hill could take elements of the Wilderness Horror subgenre, the war movie, the Western, the suspense thriller, and the Asian-style "Heroic Bloodshed" film, and tie it all together with allegorical and metaphorical themes and undercurrents, all the while on the surface allowing it to appear to be a Deliverance/Most Dangerous Game-style survival outing. Strictly speaking, this isn't a straight-up action movie, though it certainly has those elements, but Hill's style, especially with this movie, was so imitated and duplicated in the years following this, we just had to include it here for being the benchmark that it is. Just watch any Cirio Santiago-directed jungle slog or any Italian war film shot in the Philippines (i.e. Eye of the Eagle III or Dogtags, respectively) and you'll see what we mean. The influence of Southern Comfort reverberated throughout the video store era of the 80's/early 90's and beyond, and it's easy to see why. There's a certain disturbing quality to it, especially in the final third. And as much as we enjoyed Hunter's Blood (1986), that film can't really compete with the staying power of Southern Comfort, because there's so much more depth here, despite the surface similarities. Or perhaps it's the presence of Joey Travolta. One or the other.The cast is killer, the Louisiana locations are both picturesque and unsettling (captured gorgeously by cinematographer Andrew Laszlo), and the Ry Cooder score is the icing on the cake. The cumulative effect of the clever writing, brilliant direction, the great cast, strange yet pretty locations and the top-notch score is powerfully effective. You can't ask for much more. If we have one minor quibble, it's that the 105-minute running time might have been able to be trimmed down a tad. But everything else is in the "win" column for this fine film.In high school English class, we learned about the four main drivers of narrative conflict. These are: Man against man, man against society, man against nature and man against self. Southern Comfort is one of the few movies that articulately expresses ALL of the four conflicts. But one of the other themes - and a constant in the work of Walter Hill - particularly stood out: the nature of masculinity. What does it mean to be "a man"? Is there a type of man that is "best"? One that is more effective? Does losing at a certain conflict make you "less of a man"? All these questions and many more are lurking just beneath the surface.Hill also shows that not all the Vietnam-era action happened in Vietnam. This provides a point of difference that is worth noting. There's some un-PC dialogue we all love and enjoy, and much like The Thing (1982), there are almost no women in the entire movie. The Shout Factory DVD/Blu-Ray combo is the package to buy - the movie looks brilliant and there is an insightful documentary included as well.Southern Comfort is much more than a "man's movie" - it cleverly explores themes that are damn near primordial in mankind. But it never loses its power to entertain, which is what good storytelling is all about. We strongly recommend it.

This picture seems a very obvious 'thing'. You are hunting men or are being hunted by other men. More important than this classic paleontic scheme is the way society is being portrayed. And government and its institutions. The national guard is seen in this movie as a jumble of wacko's, first there is a goofy goon shooting blanks at local primitives, getting his sergeant killed, then there is a private that should be hospitalized as a serious case of insanity, thirdly an insecure platoon, amongst which there is an afro-American pushing drugs to school-kids, leaving out only two sane men. One comes from a redneck environment and graduated college, and the other one is a gentlemanly Southern pimp. Either the national guard should be abolished if this was true or people should seriously question their appetite for adventurous but anti-society entertainment and they should look for more reality in the movie they are craving. Lots of stereotyping in this movie. But hey made 30 years. America is much wiser now. No?

Semi-spoiler included. If you have not seen this movie,I envy you. I wish I could see it again for the first time. Acting is superb. Scripting is superb. A bunch of National Guardsmen try to schoolyard bully some Louisiana deer hunters and then laugh it off. They grab a tiger's tail they cannot release. Suddenly, instead of being on a pain in the butt training exercise, they are running for their lives thru a swamp.Brion James has a great line after he hangs Alan Autry from a railroad trestle. "Dis our home down here. Don't nobody fock wid us." It sums up America's attitude towards Vietnam before the reality sat in for good. Get it. Watch it. Enjoy.