Opposing Force aka Hell Camp

It sure has been a long time since I posted anything here but I saw a movie last night that really got me thinking.  I didn't even seek this one out or hear about it from word of mouth, in fact I just watched it on a whim.  I may very well be the last person to view and record vhs tapes.  This was as true back in the early 2000's as it is now.  The night I recorded Red Dragon on Encore was a very unusual night.  Having used the vhs format for so long I understood how viable blanks were after repeat viewings and recordings so I was usually pretty careful about not falling asleep while recording something.  This night was different however and I accidentally ended up recording all of Encore's programming that night.  It included Red Dragon, Opposing Force, Superfly, with a repeat showing of Red Dragon.  Can you imagine some weird insomniac staying up all night and watching these movies one after another?  Actually it kinda sounds like fun to me.

Opposing Force - 1986

"In Hell Camp you are an animal... to be broken, lied to, humiliated and violated." 

     A group of soldiers are taking part in a combat training exercise.  One by one they get captured and find out the point of the exercise wasn't combat training but preparing them for the physical and psychological abuses of POW camps.  The commanding officer goes over the edge while torturing one of the prisoners and they escape.  He then hunts them down actively trying to kill them.

     In many ways Opposing Force is ahead of its time.  The lead character in the movie is a female soldier who enters the program in order to get combat certified even though women are still not approved for combat in the military.  And this is a struggle that continues in real life to this day.  At one point she's even waterboarded and most of us didn't even know what that was until the Bush administration.  I expected a majority of the movie to consist of the commandant chasing and killing the prisoners but the movie tends to center more around the camp and the tactics used there.  I was pleasantly surprised by this because I thought it was going to be another ridiculous 80's action flick. The mental and physical torture adds a lot of depth, making a statement rather than just entertainment.

     The acting in Opposing Force is pretty solid.  Soon after their capture the prisoners get paranoid, turn on one another, and unsuccessfully try to escape.  The conditions and torture (not to mention the use of live rounds) at the camp makes you believe they're doing this for real rather than simulating it.  The most powerful preformence goes to Tom Skerrit when he finds out the commandant raped Lieutenant Casey.  He flips out, starts screaming, and demands to end the training and take command himself.  The commandant himself is pretty menacing but doesn't push it over the top when he loses it.

I give this an 86/100.  The only thing that disappointed me was how abruptly it ended.  It feels like the chase should have lasted longer but they didn't have enough money or something ended up on the cutting room floor.  The ending itself wasn't particularly good either but everything leading up to it was great.  I'd definitely recommend this movie.