Tigerland (March 5/02)

It's not surprising that Joel Schumacher would elect to make a low-budget flick like Tigerland. After he was practically ostracized from Hollywood for destroying the Batman franchise, he did the smart thing and stayed out of the spotlight for a little while. He bounced back with the gritty and violent thriller 8mm, which was refreshingly free of sentiment. With Tigerland, Schumacher earns the right to call himself a filmmaker once again.

Set in the early '70s when the Vietnam war was in full swing, Tigerland refers to a training camp on the outskirts of the conflict - where recruits are exposed to (basically) a practice version of the conflict. Colin Farrell stars as the rebel outsider - a sort of James Dean type, except without the hair - who stirs things up and generally tends to make life miserable for his superiors.

Tigerland is exceedingly familiar - from its well-worn story to the various stereotypical characters - but with a flick like this, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Most war movies of this ilk, in which we see recruits of different backgrounds getting acclimatized to their new settings, often rely on what works (heck, even Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket was guilty of this to a certain extent). Tigerland is no different, introducing us to a variety of cliched personas - but really, would these grimy fellows have stood out if they hadn't have been stock characters?

But the heart of Tigerland is Farrell's relationship with his surroundings, which seems to waver between hatred and grim acceptance. This is a guy who knows how to work the system (such as when he manages to secure an early release for a homesick cadet) as well as he knows how to push just the right buttons on his superiors. And though the rest of the cast consists mostly of the stereotypical characters you might expect, Cole Hauser pops up late in the film and makes quite an impact. As a grizzled and somewhat bitter soldier, Hauser brings some much-needed intensity to the film.

Tigerland is an effective look at the training process that recruits have to endure, but never quite catches fire or becomes the searing expose that director Schumacher presumably intended.