Buffalo scam. (Now Playing).(Buffalo Soldiers)(Movie Review)

It would be easy to go after Buffalo Soldiers for being unpatriotic. But that would be giving the filmmakers too much credit. Skittish and unsure of itself, Buffalo Soldiers may tell the story of a drug-dealing military clerk at a poorly disciplined U.S. Army post, but it doesn't even have the courage to follow through on its unpatriotic premise. Instead, this is cowardly filmmaking--a movie with the moral fiber of a deserter.

In truth, the film isn't as rebellious as its marketing strategy suggests. After repeatedly delaying the movie's release for fear of a backlash during wartime, the suits at Miramax Films have decidedly gone in the other direction. Now Buffalo Soldiers is out, and proud: The poster features smirking star Joaquin Phoenix giving the peace sign while wearing fatigues, a nonsensical clash of symbols that's about as pertinent as the picture's title. A rant about this movie's lack of respect for the military would only bolster its feigned counterculture posture.

Set on a United States Army post in 1989 West Germany, and based on news reports of AWOL behavior at that place and time, the movie is irreverent, to be sure. While Patton used Old Glory as a grand backdrop, Buffalo Soldiers features a shot, of the flag painted on the ground, where marching troops stomp all over it. Meanwhile, Phoenix's Ray Elwood, the drug dealer and our narrator, describes the modern military as composed of "criminals and high-school dropouts" who are "fighting the dull fight."

In the movie, the dullness of peace leads to drug use and crime. The more harmless of Elwood's Army buddies are zoned-out druggies--though they do drive their tanks through a German market when they're high--while the more conniving ones, like Elwood, sell arms to the black market. All of this takes place under the clueless nose of Col. Wallace Berman (Ed Harris), a buffoon who runs his base as if it were an ...