Odd Angry Shot, The

Released by: Synapse Films
Released on: August 13, 2013.
Director: Tom Jeffrey
Cast: Bryan Brown, John Hargreaves, Graham Kennedy, Graeme Blundell
Year: 1979
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The Movie:

Tom Jeffrey's 1979 film, The Odd Angry Shot, follows a Special Air Service Corporal named Harry (Graham Kennedy) who heads up a group of soldiers comprised of Bill (John Jarratt), Bung (John Hargreaves), Rogers (Bryan Brown), Dawson (Graeme Blundell), and the youngest of the group, Scott (Ian Gilmour). Harry's on his second tour of Vietnam, and appropriately surly because of it, while everyone else in his group is new to all of this though they have been highly trained in the art of war and are about as combat ready as anyone realistically can be before serving overseas.

And so these men leave their homeland and head to Vietnam where they wait. They drink a lot, they get to know one another and they bond, sharing jokes and stories. They also try to keep their sense of humor about themselves so that when they go on patrol and have to traipse through the jungles around them that are effectively enemy territory, maybe things don't seem too harsh. Yet all around them lays the threat of death, proven by attacks on and by the Vietnamese.

This is more a series of events than a more traditional plot driven narrative, the movie sort of pops us into the collective lives of these men and we travel with them to the war. We get to know them enough to care about their fate and as that happens, different aspects of their personalities are revealed. This is as much a movie about male bonding as it is about the act of combat itself, however. Those expecting violent firefights or 'death from above' style helicopter attacks like those scene in various other movies about the Vietnam conflict might be disappointed in the distinctly non-violent approach that The Odd Angry Shot takes to telling its story and making its point.

Here we see the grinding monotony of life in camp, how the soldiers have to deal with sometimes near constant rain and the rash of athlete's foot brought about by all the moisture. There are shoot outs and a few action scenes here and there but surprisingly enough they aren't what's memorable about the picture. Here it's the characters that matter and thankfully the cast members are uniformly excellent. Jarratt is sympathetic as Bill, he understandably misses his wife and really just wants to go back home. Gilmour plays the naí¯ve member of the troop very well while Brown is salty and tough but not without compassion. Hargreaves and Blundell are solid here as well while Kennedy more or less steals all of his scenes, making Harry the most well rounded and fully developed character in the bunch.

This isn't a movie about the glories of war or about the heroes that combat can often make of men, but instead a very human look at the horrors of human conflict, what it can do to a person and how some try to cope with it. Jeffrey's direction is solid, the pacing is good and the movie doesn't overstay its welcome. There are times where the fact that it was shot in Australia is a little more evident than perhaps the filmmakers wanted it to be but otherwise it's quite an effective and telling piece of filmmaking.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Synapse's AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer is framed at 1.78.1 widescreen and it looks excellent. Colors are nice and bright without looking artificially boosted and detail is consistently impressive. The image is clean and crisp but not digitally scrubbed, so we get a very natural looking film like transfer that offers up the movie in excellent shape. Skin tones look nice and natural, never waxy, and black levels are strong and deep. There are no obvious problems with compression artifacts or edge enhancement and all in all, the transfer here is top notch.

The only audio option is an English language DTS-HD Mono track, but it's fine. The levels are properly balanced, the track is clean and free of any hiss and the dialogue is easy to understand. Sound effects are mixed in nicely and don't overpower the performances and the score sounds quite good here, proving to have more depth than you might expect from an older mono mix.

The main extra on the disc is an audio commentary with Producer/Director Tom Jeffrey, Producer Sue Milliken and Actor Graeme Blundell. This is a pretty active track with Jeffrey taking the lead most of the time as he covers the difficulties of trying to make Australian locations effectively double for Vietnam and overcoming the limitations of shooting on a low budget to complete the film. Case in point? They did it without much in the way of reshoots and shot in an Australian army training area to save money where they could.

Aside from that, we also get a seven minute long featurette entitled Stunts Down Under With Buddy Joe Hooker. It's an informative talk with the American stuntman who worked on the picture during a lull in his Hollywood career and he covers his work on the picture and how he got involved with it. Rounding out the extras is the film's original theatrical trailer, menus and chapter selection. We also get some nice reversible cover art.

The Final Word:

The Odd Angry Shot is a well written and nicely thought out war movie, something a little different in the genre that puts character development over carnage and the human element in front of the action set pieces. Synapse's Blu-ray contains a decent commentary and an interesting featurette and offers the movie up in excellent condition.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!