Film / Buffalo Soldiers

Buffalo Soldiers is a 2001 American satirical war film directed by Gregor Jordan, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scott Glenn, Anna Paquin, Gabriel Mann, Elizabeth McGovern, Michael Peña, Dean Stockwell, and Ed Harris.

Ray Elwood (Phoenix) is a soldier stationed at a US Army base in 1989 Germany. With no war to fight, he and his fellow grunts spend their time engaging in the drug trade and other illegal activities to pass the time. When Elwood encounters a large supply of military-grade weapons whose owners were killed in a bizarre tank accident, he steals and tries to sell the weapons. His cozy life on the base becomes more difficult when he's confronted by Robert Lee (Glenn), a by-the-book sergeant who immediately takes a dislike to Elwood.

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This film provides examples of:

• Accidental Murder:
  • In the opening scene, the bored soldiers at the base try to play a game of football indoors. They knock one skinny soldier into the corner of a table by the head. Elwood is the only person present who notices that he died.
  • The drugged-up tank crew kill two of their fellow soldiers by blowing up a gas station, engulfing the pair in a huge fireball. The crew is too high to even care or realize. Earlier on, they nearly flatten several German civilians.
• Armed Farces: The movie is a satirical comedy where a bunch of bored soldiers stationed in West Germany near the end of the Cold War pass their time by manufacturing drugs.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking : When Berman reads the coroner's report:
  Berman: Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, lysergic acid, deithyl... whatever the hell it is, amphetamines, traces of barbiturates, estrogen... Estrogen ??
• Artistic License – Pharmacology: No, eating would do nothing to prevent getting high on the heroin fumes. But otherwise, the pay-back on Saad wouldn't work.
• Badass Boast: Sergeant Lee gets Elwood's buddy Stoney to back down. An interesting variant because Lee acknowledges that Stoney is also a badass. Just not as badass as he is.
  Stoney: You and me can step outside right now.
  Lee: Whoa. You think you can take me?...
  Elwood: Uh-oh, customers.
  Lee: Yeah, maybe. Straight up, hand-to-hand, you got a shot. Maybe. But maybe I wear a blade. Maybe I got a .45 cocked and locked to shove up your ass. You ain't considered that, have you?
• Black Comedy: Unlike just about any other Armed Farces movie, this one is incredibly cynical and bitter, where the incompetence of the military is portrayed not as funny by itself, but how much bad and depraved things such incompetence allows for. It is still played for laughs, but the context and ever-increasing pile of dead bodies makes it a wholly different experience.
• Blood Knight: As far as Sergeant Lee is concerned, Vietnam War was a great time and he genuinely enjoyed every single minute of it. Particularly the fact that he could kill whoever he pleased, whenever he pleased. The Top goes as far as telling Elwood - while preparing to kill him - that the war could be easily won, if only there were more people like him around.
• Booby Trap: Stoney goes to check on the drug stash after Saad voices complain about a missing shipment. As he opens the locker, he finds a grenade hanging on a string, with the pin taped to the doors. He has just enough time to notice what's up before it explodes in his face. Sergeant Lee explains to Elwood that he was the one who set it up, to remove Elwood's bodyguard from the picture.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Elwood figures out early on that Sergeant Lee must be this sort of man, so just to mess with him he starts dating his daughter. As she quickly points out, Robert E. Lee is not the sort of person you want to antagonise. Especially not when it comes to his daughter. Elwood quickly finds out making things personal with his new Top is a terrible idea. In the finale, Lee is ready to beat Ray to death not over his numerous crimes, but for sleeping with Robyn.
• Bribe Backfire: Elwood tries to bribe his new hardass superior Sergeant Lee by offering him a brand new television set. Lee responds to his offer by kicking in the screen.
• Broken Pedestal: PFC Knoll faces extreme levels of brutal bullying and even racism (and he's white, which makes it stand out even more), to the point he is utterly disillusioned about the military, comparing his miserable lot with his father and grandfather having nothing but the best memories from their service and life-long friendship with the people they've served with. And then we also learn he endured all that shit just to box Elwood, Saad and their associates.
• Call-Back: "Cleanliness is next to godliness". First said by Elwood to justify excess requisition on cleaning supplies to sell off via black market, but in the finale said by his new boss in the Hawaii base as Elwood handles him a bogus requisition.
• Clandestine Chemist: Ray Elwood is baking heroin using supplies provided by the Turk.
• Combat Pragmatist: Sergeant Lee bluffs his way out of a fight by pointing out he might have a gun or knife.
• Corrupt Quartermaster: We are introduced to Elwood as he's in the process of back-selling cleaning supplies on the black market. A big part of the plot revolves around him trying to sell a truck full of firearms and weapon systems that went missing, while at the same time Sergeant Lee is trying to crack down on the whole operation.
• Dirty Cop: Sergeant Saad is a MP of the base. Along with other MPs, he's running an all-black outfit that is too busy selling dope to be bothered with the consequences, while using their position to cover up all the minor fuck-ups, as long as they get their cut of profits.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Turk is a Turkish mobster with No Name Given.
• False Friend: Elwood is very friendly with his commanding officer, Colonel Berman. That's because this makes stealing military provisions all that easier. On top of that, he's also sleeping with Berman's wife, just because. Eventually, Elwood personally arranges for the colonel to fail the field exercise in a very quick order for personal gains, while Berman, nonthewiser, is discharged of duty - and he even confesses his personal feelings about it directly to Elwood.
• Famous Ancestor: Colonel Berman discovers he's a descendant of Confederate General John Bell Hood, known as "The Iron Boar". His boasting about it doesn't go as he'd imagined.
• The Film of the Book: Based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Robert O'Connor.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Elwood is checking files on Lee, there is his entire military career, education, family status and few other details that set up things to come. Without pausing, you've got exactly 3 seconds to read each page.
• Friend in the Black Market: In both cases, they are very chummy to Ray
  • Herman the German is Elwood's contact for the regular stuff that the quartermaster can requisit and then sell off.
  • The Turk delivers Elwood opiates to cook heroin for the base's drug ring.
• The General's Daughter: Actually invoked by Elwood, who hooks up with Sergeant Lee's daughter specifically to piss him off despite her warnings that he's gonna kill Elwood. He almost does so in the climax.
• General Failure: Coloner Berman is an incompetent career officer who clearly only got his rank and post simply by tenure (and even that barely), rather than having any actual skills or abilities. However, his incompetence is catching up with him, and after the disastrous exercises, he's drummed out of the military.
• Generic Ethnic Crime Gang:
  • The base's MP is an all-blacks gang of thugs that have dibs on every illicit operation going on and boss around everyone, enforcing Scary Black Man in-universe.
  • Downplayed with the Turk and his Turkish enforcers, befitting the story set in the West Germany in the tail end of the 80s.
• Here We Go Again!: While the soldiers' drug plant is destroyed in a huge explosion in the end, none of the crimes committed on the base are tied to Elwood and he is reassigned to a base in Hawaii where it's clear that he's up to his usual schemes.
• Hero Antagonist: Subverted with First Sergeant Lee. He's a hardass career soldier who is going after Elwood, (who is a sleazy criminal cum drug dealer, not to mention a poor excuse for a soldier) but he also proves himself just as petty as Elwood in their competition with each other and quickly crosses the line when he murders Elwood's friend with a hand grenade trap.
• Historical Character's Fictional Relative: Colonel Berman is a descendant of Confederate General John Bell Hood.
• Hollywood Science: There's a scene where someone in charge of a large-scale heroin synthesis operation warns that if the solution hits boiling point, dire consequences will occur. Conveniently enough, as we later discover during a dramatic close-up on a thermometer, it boils at exactly 100°C. (Even if it were to hit the actual boiling point of ~270°C, the result wouldn't have been nearly as explosive as shown in the film.)
• Ignored Expert: Robyn knows her dad more than anyone else. Everyone ignores her warnings about what sort of man and soldier he is, until it is way too late.
• Improperly Placed Firearms: Averted in a nicely self-referential way. The plot revolves around how relatively easy it was to sell off large amounts of weapons stolen from US army bases in Germany. After the Cold War ended and US troops returned home, vast amounts of materiel were left behind. One member of the film crew owned 100 of the appropriate guns to lend the production. Where one character is given a particularly heavy gun to carry on exercises as a punishment, there was some difficulty in sourcing this gun.
• In Love with the Mark: Ray starts dating Robyn simply to spite Sergeant Lee, but eventually they end up in a genuine relationship.
• Irony: Knoll has a breakdown after being beaten by Saad and his gang of MPs, confessing to Elwood how awful this is when compared with the fond memories of his father and grandfather of their service and Fire-Forged Friends. This is a turning point for Elwood, as he takes pity on Knoll, and the two eventually become good, trusting friends. Except Knoll is The Mole to arrest Ray. They both acknowledge in the end how weird it is to have Friendly Enemy and how Ray is the only real friend Brian made during his service.
• It's Personal:
  • Elwood starts dating Sergeant Lee's daughter, simply to get back on him. It backfires in a spectacular fashion, as Lee starts to punish Ray at every given chance, taking very personal offense.
  • Ray himself is taken aback when targeted by Lee, so he starts to further escalate things, creating a vicious cycle of ever-increasing tension.
• Karma Houdini: In the end, Elwood gets away with everything scot-free and proceeds to set up a new racket as soon as put back to service.
• The Last Straw: The utterly failed field exercise is the breaking point for the already failing military career of Colonel Berman. Since he proposed the whole exercise himself and failed it so miserably, all right before his incoming evaluating, he's discharged of his duty and from the Army.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Pretty much every party in the Gambit Pileup is evil one way or another, but Elwood comes on top for being non-malicious and the least brutal of all sides, while at the same time Sergeant Lee is an actual lawman taking down a criminal net - it's his methods that are abhorrent. Everyone else is just different shades of organised crime, fully accepting murder as a solution.
• Like a Duck Takes to Water: Somewhere between his sentence and the film's present, Elwood managed to climb to Specialist, get into quartermaster position and set himself a cozy life by trading military supplies to the outside, while also being Clandestine Chemist for the drug ring of his base.
• Living Crashpad: In the finale, Elwood drags Sergeant Lee off the window with himself, and then uses Lee as a cushion, effectively murdering him.
• Lovable Rogue: Despite Elwood being a thoroughly crooked and self-serving criminal in uniform, he manages to still be a sympathetic character. It helps that his enemies are dirty and brutal MPs, along with a hardass, Knight Templar First Sergeant trying to set order in the base.
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • In the opening, after an Accidental Murder of a soldier that caved-in his skull over a corner of a table while goofing around with a football, the other soldiers toss his body off the window, solely to avoid direct trouble. It is further covered up as an accident during installation of an anthena.
  • Sergeant Lee beats the shit out of Elwood, to the point he can't even stand on his own. He then drags Ray to the top floor of a tall building, with plans to splatter him on the road down below and thus cover his own tracks.
  • Ironically, when the top brass has to cover the explosion of the drug lab and various other mishaps going in the base, they write part of it as a freak accident with a gas leak.
• Military Moonshiner: Updated. Ray Elwood doesn't make moonshine; he bakes heroin.
• The Mob Boss Is Scarier: Elwood learns the hard way that the Turk might be a very polite man, but he will kill Ray and his friends should they get some dumb ideas like breaking the deal for the weapons the Turk already have sold and now needs them delivered.
• The Mole: Brian Knoll is not a Private First Class, but a 2nd Lieutenant and the inside man to Ray's operation. He endured everything thrown at him just to keep his cover until the last moment.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: When Lee eventually gets his hands on Elwood, he is beating him to death.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: When Stg. Lee meets Elwood and his crew for the first time, he acts like a bumbling, elderly man who's all chummy and easily fooled. The charade is off when Elwood tries to bribe him and Lee shows his true colours.
• Odd Friendship: Ray eventually befriends Knoll, a Naïve Newcomer that Lee spitefully assigned to Elwood's barrack's "suite". While Knoll is there to eventually arrest Elwood for his crimes, their friendship is completely genuine.
• Only Sane Man: Garcia is the only person in Elwood's outfit who realises that they should instantly return the weapons they've accidently seized, as this is completely out of their league. He is also the only person to keep his head cool when a group of soldiers raid their smack lab in the finale - and he lives to tell the tale.
  Elwood: There is no time like now, guys...
  Garcia: "There is no time like now"? Are you crazy? We're not weapons dealers!
• Real Men Eat Meat: Defied by the head of the MP at the military base, who is a very manly Scary Black Man who abhors meat. The main character uses this to mess with him by only providing him with nothing but hot-dogs and burgers during a drug cooking session.
• Scary Black Man:
  • Stoney is Elwood's heavy: tall, muscular, black and very confrontational against anyone who as much as gives Elwood a strange look.
  • Saad and his gang of MPs deliberately invoke it as part of their schtick as Dirty Cops intimidating everyone on their way.
• Screw the War, We're Partying: The film centers around a bunch of U.S. soldiers in late 1980s West Germany being bored out of their skulls from the lack of combat. They respond by partying all the time and setting up a drug ring, at least until a hard-ass sergeant arrives to crack them down.
• Self-Made Man: General Lancaster reached his current rank all on his own, without any pedigree to help himself. Which means he not only isn't impressed by Famous Ancestors, he outright mocks his underlings for their petty bidding of who's lineage is better. As he puts it:
  I don't go much for this lineage shit. I'm not related to anyone famous. And this family line bullshit makes me feel insecure. My belief is: if you come from dirt, you fight better, because you don't want to go back to the dirt.
• Sleeping with the Boss's Wife: SPC Elwood is sleeping with his superior Colonel Berman's German wife behind his back. His boss is enough of a dimwit that he never suspects a thing, and still believes that Elwood is a stand-up soldier after he's forced into early retirement as a result of Elwood's machinations.
• Suspicious Spending: Sgt. Lee quickly catches on to the criminal activities going on in the base when he notices that Pvt. Garcia is wearing a very expensive watch he has no business of having based on his salary or lowly origins.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: 2nd Lieutenant Brian Knoll is there to arrest Elwood and gather first-hand evidence on his operation, but he's one of the most sympathetic characters in the story. They both acknowledge that their friendship couldn't get any more complicated than that.
• Tanks, but No Tanks: Since Pentagon denied any support to the movie, the production team had to improvise. Bundeswehr provided former US military bases for location shots, trucks, military cars and even few M113 were rented and sourced from collectors... but the US soldiers are still driving in German Leopard 1 tanks, with zero effort to conceal the fact, since the prop department quickly realised it would be impossible.
• Trading Bars for Stripes: Ray Elwood was caught while carjacking. He was given a choice by the judge: six months in prison and a stain in his papers... or three years in the Army. He picked the Army, but decided to instantly employ his skills to make the most of it - financially, that is.
• Trojan Horse: Since Elwood needs the nuclear base clear to ship out the weapons he stored there earlier post-haste, he decides to help the other side of the field exercises to use False Flag Operation and drive two supply trucks that were supposed to deliver breakfast for Colonel Berman's troops. The two-day exercise is thus over before it even started for good, and Berman is drummed out of the military for being an incompetent officer.
• Tropical Epilogue: At the end SPC Elwood gets away basically scot-free with his crimes and ends up getting redeployed to a U.S. base in Hawaii where he can continue his schemes.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Elwood apparently had an "arrangement" with his first CO, but when Sergeant Lee takes over the unit he immediately becomes a thorn in Elwood's side because for him the Army is Serious Business. That said, Elwood isn't just lazy or in possession of some contraband but a genuine criminal, making Lee's crusade against Elwood and his associates pretty reasonable.
• Uncertain Doom: It's never spelled out, but Knoll probably died in the explosion in the end.
• The Vietnam Vet: First Sergeant Lee. He's probably the only person in the entire base to actually take part in an armed conflict.
• Villain Protagonist: Elwood isn't just a Corrupt Quartermaster, he's running an openly criminal racket, with drug cooking and distribution and in the very opening he manages to steal two trucks full of weapons in a freak accident caused by his own drugs.
• War Is Glorious: Discussed. War may be hell, but waiting around as a US soldier on a military base in West Germany with nothing to do is nearly as bad. When one of the soldiers is beaten up for walking on the wrong part of the base, he points out how his father's war friends are the best of friends, how they still meet up every year, even 45 years later (the films is incidentally set against the fall of the wall).

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