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| Warner Bros. | Release Date: October 4, 1991 |
Starring:
Anthony Clark, Christina Mastin, Christopher Shaw, Elizabeth Daily, Holly Near, Lili Taylor, Mitchell Whitfield, Richard Panebianco, River Phoenix, Sue Morales
Summary:
Before leaving to fight in Vietnam, a group of teenagers play a game where they try to seduce the ugliest girl they can find.
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I loved the picture, without being blind to its faults. But you don't judge a movie with a scorecard but by what it gives you, and this one gives more than anything I've seen in months. [04 Oct 1991, p.D1]
By trying to be about so little, telling a simple fragile romantic story, Dogfight is about so much -- war and peace, love and romance, sex roles and cultural myths. What it understands is that to be really anti-war, rather than glitzy moralizing, a film should just be full of life, its characters so richly nuanced and detailed that they resonate with energy.
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Savoca skilfully negotiates the nastiness of the opening scenes: four Marines organise a party, the object of which is to see who can bring along the most unattractive date. She is almost as successful with the potentially maudlin central section, after Phoenix has picked up Taylor, and remorse segues into affection and tenderness.
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It’s not that Dogfight doesn’t have any story. In fact it has two, but neither one has anything like the weight of a feature, and the connection between the two is too tenuous for even a director as capable as Nancy Savoca (making her first film since the much-lauded True Love) to bridge.
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The film, directed by Nancy Savoca (True Love) from a screenplay by Bob Comfort, is one of those sensitive dramas that defines its sensitivity by how brutally it can hammer the audience into feeling pity for its characters. [04 Oct 1991, p.L]
Jun 30, 2021
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Aug 21, 2021
The film uses a very likeable romance between two radically different characters (a shout-out to Lili Taylor who is on par with lead River Phoenix) to share, with the audience, a 1960's Western America through various lenses. Director Nancy Savoca has delivered a superb piece of cinema.
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