Svenstadt This movie has all the right elements in it and strikes a sympathetic tone. Colin Farrell is the kind of hero that makes movies great; he makes you want to care about the character. Also, it is a war movie but isn't set in war but rather before the war, and the stress going into the war is often greater than the war itself, so it has a kind of ' more is less ' thing going on in that sense. This movie could be described as extremely raw in nature: the sex scene is raw and very hot, the performances are raw, the fight scene between the hero and villain, Pvt. Wilson, makes you feel like you are witnessing a real fight. You will feel the stress as the characters move into and out situations of what you think you would feel in real life. In addition to having a realistic portrayal of the attitudes of the characters at this point in the war which, having studied Vietnam, I can tell you it is consistent with actual experiences.

bkoganbing It is certainly interesting to write a review about a film that took place where I actually resided for two months. In September of 1971 when this film is set, your's truly was doing his basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. I did get to the North Fort at one point in my training where the infamous Tigerland was located. In fact Tigerland was a nickname given to the whole northern part of the army base.I was doing the basic training to be a weekend warrior and avoid Vietnam. But I saw so many of the kids who were just like the ones portrayed in the film it was actually a rather nerve wrecking old home week. In 1971 everyone except the policy makers in Washington knew that this was going to end when as Senator George Aiken declared, we said we won and then went home. And of course the South Vietnamese government we were protecting would fold like a napkin.By that time the army was scraping the bottom for soldier material and you can see it in the company of men that are in Tigerland. This is where more soldiers shipped for Vietnam than any other place in the nation. The Louisiana swamps best approximated the climate conditions of Vietnam.This particular company has a real odd ball in it with Colin Farrell. He's doing his best to get out of the army, but the army just won't oblige him. So he's waging his own war against them by becoming a 'barracks lawyer' and getting others out. And he's driving the officers and NCOs quite nuts doing it.I would rate Tigerland a lot higher because there is much I liked about the film. It was not shot at Fort Polk, but in places that gave you feel of the place. What I remember best about it was rain and mud. In that summer of 1971 it rained nearly every single day I was there. But the rain and sometimes it would come a few times a day. Would be a sudden downpour, maybe at most 20 minutes then it would cool off and then resume being muggy. And the ground couldn't absorb it fast enough so it was always muddy. You did your best work in that brief period after rain stopped it was then actually decent enough for normal activities.What I couldn't quite grasp was Colin Farrell's motivations for what he was doing. I blame that on the writer and also the director.As for the other players the best in the cast was Thomas Guiry playing this poor sad sack kid from the Louisiana bayous. I met a few just like him, he stopped his formal education at the 6th grade. It was a touching performance on Guiry's part.So here's to Fort Polk, not a place I recommend, but sometimes a place which is needed to train our soldiers. It got a good film, but not a great one in its honor.

Spikeopath Tigerland was the name of a U.S. Army training camp located at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Tagged as the second worst part of the Earth, it was a recreation of the Vietnamese jungle and was used to prepare American soldiers for the hellish terrain they were soon to be fighting in. Directed by Joel Schumacher, Tigerland stars Colin Farrell as Private Roland Bozz, a reluctant recruit to the war effort who upsets his superiors by having a canny knack for exploiting loop holes in the rule book. However, it's evident that Bozz has leadership qualities, but can the officers convince him he is born to lead? By the time of Tigerland's release, the Vietnam movie had apparently run its course. The announcement that Joel Schumacher was to delve into the conflict for his next movie was met with less than enthusiastic responses. This was after all the director who had not too long prior reduced the once darkly watchable Batman franchise to comedy campy ham overdrive. Alarm bells were further starting to go off when it was revealed that it was to be a short low budget shoot of 28 days, with a cast of unknowns and filmed in grainy 16 millimetre. Yet two things were forgotten by his many detractors. One was that Schumacher had showed himself capable of guiding a young vibrant cast to high levels of watch-ability (The Lost Boys), and two, that he had made Falling Down in the early 90s, thus tricky and darker edged material was not beyond him. Tigerland is a fine film, there is no actual conflict to observe other than the interactions between Bozz, his fellow squadies and his superiors. This is more boot camp drama than a film about military engagements. But the impact is much the same as our group of young men prepare for a fate that doesn't exactly have favourable odds; their respective reasons for being there in the first place containing varying degrees of bravado or disbelief. To which, much to his initial bemusement, Bozz simultaneously becomes a beacon of hope to many and a figure for revilement. The out-shot of this is that Tigerland winds up an expertly crafted movie, one that is propelled by great acting and one that quietly sneaks up on you and cloaks you in sadness. Schumacher is not the sole reason for why the film works so well though, he had some quality help. Ross Klavan and Michael McGruther's screenplay rises above the character clichés that exist in every army training camp based movie. Helped enormously by Klavan drawing on his real life experiences in the army, Tigerland doesn't hurtle towards its climax (a climax that is understated and poignant), it takes its time, characters are formed and with the then unknown Farrell on stupendously bewitching form, it's as engaging as a Vietnam film gets. This in spite of the grim look of the piece as Matthew Libatique's cinematography strips away vibrant colours and uses murky greys and greens to put the viewer right in there with them at boot camp. The look, the feel and the story all pull together nicely, making Tigerland fit to be mentioned in the same breath as those popular Vietnam movies from the previous decades. 8/10

denryter18919 It's been awhile since I saw it and would not waste my time watching it again but as a Nam vet and NCO who went through Tigerland twice, once as a trainee and once as a training sergeant, this movie was very disappointing. Not real historically accurate on many fronts. Most importantly this whole deal about Bozz being such an individualist and non conformist is pure nonsense. The whole point of military training, especially for combat infantry is to eliminate individualism and get everyone playing on the same team. There is no room for non conformity in combat. Our combat units could not be effective if we had any doubt of what to expect from the guy or the unit next to us. Guys like the Bozz character depicted in this movie end up in the stockade or at least get run out of combat units. Although not technically a war movie because it covers only training for war, it is a movie whose central theme is about Vietnam and on that note I found it to be the second worst Vietnam genre movie behind only that miserable piece of garbage, Tunnel Rats.