Southern Comfort (1981)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
PFC Spencer	Keith Carradine
Corporal Charles Hardin	Powers Boothe	½
Corporal Lonnie Reece	Fred Ward	½
PFC Simms	Franklyn Seales	½
Private Tyrone Cribbs	T. K. Carter	-
Private Stuckey	Lewis Smith	-
Sergeant Casper	Les Lannom
Staff Sergeant Crawford Poole	Peter Coyote	-
Corporal "Coach" Bowden	Carlos Brown
Cajun Trapper	Brion James

Review

Walter Hill (The Driver, The Warriors, 48 Hrs.) wrote and directed this obvious nod to Deliverance about a squad from the National Guard who get lost in a bayou area in Louisiana and end up being hunted by a group of local Cajun people. The film has nerve and tension, mainly thanks to Hill's fine tempo and spacing in the film's otherwise indistinguishable locations, which are all about cypress trees and swamps. The characters which make up the squad are all somewhat underdeveloped and therefore appear erratic, but none of them are without potential. And thanks to the two leads Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe (respectively mimicking Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds' characters, if you like), we get an increasingly more human touch as the film progresses. Unlike many movies in this and similar subgenres, Southern Comfort peaks during its final 20 minutes, most notably with a brilliant segment in which Hill expertly intercuts a Cajun pig roast party with the finale of the aforementioned hunt.