EMI Distribution | Release Date: September 25, 1981 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
63
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
6
Negative:
0
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70
At times Southern Comfort seems like a kind of war game itself--an academic exercise, perfectly executed but a little cut and dried. Still, it's an exercise passed with flying colors. The objective is sighted, the mission accomplished, the audience properly pummeled. [05 Oct 1981, p.78]
60
Walter Hill has a dazzling competence as an action director; he uses the locale for its paranoia-inducing strangeness (it suggests Vietnam), and he uses the men to demonstrate what he thinks it takes to survive. Its limitation is that there's nothing underneath the characters' macho masks.
50
Southern Comfort sets up a potentially compelling switch on The Most Dangerous Game, but Hill's tactical maneuvers prove too diffuse and uncoordinated to carry out a successful variation. [16 Oct 1981, p.B1]
50
The specifics of Hill's movie - and despite its straining for universality, it is all specifics - come approximately a decade too late; in the wake of Who'll Stop the Rain and Apocalypse Now (and even that great B-movie anti-war movie, The Big Red One), it sinks like an insignificant stone. [24 Oct 1981]