1. Why did they only have blanks to shoot?
2. Why did Bowden blow up the cabin and paint a red cross on his chest?
3. What was the Trapper saying when Hardin and Reese were fighting?
4. What did Bowden mumble/say when Spencer and Hardin were talking at night?
1. Because they were National Guardsmen on a weekend training exercise in the U.S. during peacetime. Why would you think they'd have/need live ammunition?
2. He thought he was avenging Staff Sgt. Poole's murder, but he had actually just completely lost his mind.
3. He was telling Hardin to "kill him!", first in Cajun French, and finally in English.
4. Edit: He mumbles, "Civilian in peace, soldier in war. I am the Guard."
I need my 1987 DG20 Casio electric guitar set to mandolin, yeah...
The last one, sounds like he said he wanted to get a pizza and that he was a soldier for guard, something like that.
"We have guided missiles and misguided men."
1973 was not peacetime for the U.S. The Vietnam war was still going on.
sharePer the FAQ section here, the move is set just after the end of the war. I'm not sure how accurate this info is, but that's what I based my statement above on.
Southern Comfort was released in the United States in 1981, although it is set in 1973. US forces withdrew from Vietnam in January 1973, after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, which officially brought the conflict to an end. As such, the film is set immediately after this withdrawal, with the moral of the US army at its lowest ebb. Additionally, when the film was made in 1980/1981, the US was still in the midst of a collective post-war angst, finding it difficult to accept the crushing defeat which it had experienced at the hands of the, apparently, inferior Vietnamese. As such, both the date of the film's setting (the immediate disappointment of defeat) and the date of its release (the long-term ramifications of defeat) are relatable to the conflict.
Bowden came out there CRAZY. They hadn't even been there 24 hours yet. Only one person shot and that was justified after that ding bat fired blanks at them. There was nothing to "lose" it over at that point.
share[deleted]
Gee Wilakerz!!! Look at it a little more realistically...
I first caught the movie on cable at the point where the guy (can't remember names now) has the jerky guy up against the tree and the Cajun guys tells him to "Kill Him" and runs away. I watched through to the end. So, I was missing the beginning. I thought immediatly, when the guy drowned in quick-sand following the helicopter that the "Army" was not trying to help them and at the end, I felt the same. But... I missed the first part of the movie, so, I wasn't sure if I was right. I also wondered why they had the one soldier tied up.
I came to the boards to see comments and when I saw others questioning if it was a setup, I ordered the DVD from Netflix and watch this past weekend in full detail and put a lot of pieces in in place.
There was no LOGICAL reason for him to go insane in less than 24 hours. He was CRAZY from the start! Go back and look at the movie again with fresh eyes. I'm a female ex-reservist, fully familiar with weekend drills in the stix with blanks, by the way...
Here's what we have:
1. They go on the weekend to do training. NO REASON TO GO INSANE, RIGHT? RIGHT.
2. They set out in the early morning and the map seems a little off (no biggie, still SANE)
3. In order to get where they need to go, they have to cross the water (a bummer, but not really a biggie) they're soldiers, they can route-step around the water or cross the water.
4. They decide to use canoes that didn't belong to them (big mistake - it's theft, but no biggie - they're leaving a note) NO REASON TO GO INSANE YET. Only been out there a few hours. You with me? OK...
5. The owners of the boats come back just as they leave the shore and call out to them (a bit embarrassing, but not a threat to anybody's SANITY)
6. They decide to turn around and return the boats
7. The idiot decides to fire at the shoreline with blanks. LET'S STOP HERE.
Anybody in the group in their right mind knows that the men standing on the shoreline (at face value) HAVE NO IDEA THAT HE'S SHOOTING BLANKS. Right? Right. So... every SOLDIER in the boats should expect that the men on the shore line feel threatened, so when they shoot the guy in the head, it makes sense. It's not an unreasonable thing to expect. They should have yelled back that the guy was playing and shooting blanks. They had plenty of time to shout to the guys on shore (who dove for cover) - I have rewound it to check. "Sorry, It's OK! He's shooting blanks and being stupid!!! We're bringing the boats back!" They said nothing and then POW! A bullet to the brain. Now...
8. When the guy gets shot, it wasn't out of the blue, it was provoked - no one in the group should GO INSANE in the next hour because of that. Distraught, in shock, scared - sure, but INSANE and lose it?
9. They get to the shore maybe 5 minutes later and hunt down the guy at the cabin a little while later (THE SAME DAY - it's not even dark yet).
10. The guy flipping out a little and punching the Cajun - that's realistic - he's pissed off.
11. But the other guy to go INSANE because one guy got shot after one of their guys fired on strangers IN THE BACKWOODS first?
It is just not reasonable. Clearly he was already CRAZY.
Let's say you "benp1" go camping at the lake for the weekend, your group takes off on someone else's water jets, they catch you before you get too far, you turn around to bring them back and one of your group fires a gun at the owners of the jets (with blanks). The owners of the boats fire back in self defense, killing one of your group. You set out to follow the owners of the water jets and find one of them within a couple of hours and one in your group goes INSANE. Really? This morning every one in your group was perfectly SANE and after a provoked shooting, they go INSANE?
If they had been out there for days and had been stalked, the guy was shot FOR NO REASON, they were tired, hungry, a few of them picked off a few at a time. Sure, but none of that happened when he flipped out.
Sorry for the novel...
I remember watching as a young teenager and thinking that Coach's behavior early on was a little "off." The way he clearly jumps out of the canoe after Poole, yelling his name like someone he loved just got killed. For all we know, he had a thing for the guy and Stucky's little joke really got under his skin. There was also that dialog between him and Cribbs when he starts talking about the football team and it's obvious that Cribbs is just busting his ass a bit. You can tell that Coach took everything way too seriously and the sudden death and plunge into despair brought his orderly little world into a breaking point. As a adult, I've seen perfectly normal people just lose their sh!t over the most basic disasters. I'm more of a Hardin type: try to keep your cool, know the score and CYA.
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One thing about emotions and emotional responses is that they don't necessarily fit neatly into logical boxes.
Having watched the movie recently, Bowden struck me as not being very comfortable to start with. He was also seemingly nervous about taking the boats in the first place.
It may be that the cajuns clearly didn't know that blanks were being used at first, one might expect them to notice that there are no bullets flying past - the woods are dense and yet nothing gets hit. But the soldiers are aware that the reaction might be bad - they frantically paddle for shore. Their fear is realised when one of them gets a bullet in the head.
If someone has never been in any sort of serious combat situation, how might we expect them to react when someone a few metres away gets a bullet in their head? Trying to imagine such a situation doesn't make any sense - I couldn't imagine what it would be like if one of my best friends died until it happened.
People convince themselves of the most ridiculous things all the time - just look at conspiracy theories, religious sects, etc. In a stressful situation like that, for a guy who in his normal life teaches history and coaches football, who're we to say that he couldn't convince himself that the reaction of the cajuns was way over the top?
His behaviour is odd from a few minutes after the shooting until he storms the guy outside the shack. When he storms the shack he's clearly very angry, but in the previous period he seems reasonably together. My impression is that this is a case of below par acting rather than anything else. Or perhaps it's a reasonable rendition of a person losing it - people descending into madness are not exempt from periods of lucidity.
And eventually he may simply be despairing - there seems to be no hope at all.
But just because we can't imagine events going the way they're depicted in the movie doesn't mean it's not possible.
Still not believable. No one who isn't already whacked out, goes THAT crazy THAT quick. He was crazy when he went out there - he just needed a stage to dance on.
The original thought behind this post was that they suffered such great torment in the first 2 hours of being out there that it was enough to drive them insane. Looking at the movie, the only thing was the guy getting shot on the stolen canoe IN RESPONSE TO THEM FIRING BLANKS AT THE PEOPLE on the shore. They had it coming. The guy was crazy when he went out there. Sure, you can't tell how people respond, but common sense tells you that a person is fragile if they go insane immediately after someone is shot... particularly a grown man in the army.
I maintain that he was already crazy.
I hate the way people have put irrational thoughts or ctions in this "crazy" box. You don't just GO crazy. It's not a light switch that flips. Crazy people are only crazy by vote. The only difference between sane and insane is a majority control. It's not like you just go oops! Lost my mind! He was suffering from post traumatic stress. Boys in Iraq get it all the time. He is still there, he just can't decipher the situation. And that's why it made sense. He was a high school football coach. He didn't know what stress was! Haha! Clean living, wholesome, inspiring, and naive. I love the statement hill made in that movie. The all American guy cracked, and the chemical engineer used his head to get out.
Coming Soon... The December Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qj7fRpcXRI
Just finished watching the movie again, and they make that point in the movie itself. Near the end, when it is just Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe and him wandering through the swamp, Boothe says something about why did Coach snap like that, he must have been crazy before we got out here. Carradine responds, yeah, we all knew that. They probably did not expect anything to happen that would make it an issue.
shareThanks for pointing that out. You know, I wish people weren't so quick to claim defeat and utter weakness. I think we talk ourselves into failure by thinking a normal, well-adjusted person can go insane so easily.
The miners in Chile are a fine example of plain old human resiliency and reason under the toughest circumstances. I want to be around people like them in the good times and when trouble hits.
A good question is, "Why even have blanks to shoot?". Did they anticipate some type of combatant? Even if they did, what kind of training, other than realistic noise, would blanks accomplish?
shareI never thought of that, but it is a goodpoint. They needed to shoot blanks at the cajuns for the whole plot to move forward, but it does not make sense for the National Guard to go on maneuvers with blanks. I did not serve, it would be interesting to know from someone who has been in the Natl Guard if that is at absurd as it sounds.
shareWell, I served here in Finland in our conscript army and it does seem a bit odd that someone would be issued blanks even if they had no use for them. I mean, these guys were just doing some recon and there clearly wasn't going to be a battle exercise where they'd took part. We had blanks only in the case that it was clear and evident that we were to take part in a firefight during the current exercise. If we were just marching, orienteering, doing checkpoint duty or something else like that, our rifles were empty.
The blanks themselves were great for immersion purposes. Only after our guns and those of OPFOR spew smoke and fire we did take our training seriously.
2. Why did Bowden blow up the cabin and paint a red cross on his chest?
A few days in the jungle and he went all "Apocalypse Now." Lost his mind.