This looks even better than it did when I first saw in, in part because in this era of CGI and digital something shot in film on location seems so amazing.
The Louisiana National Guard seem terrible - lazy, lacking discipline, full of idiots, insubordinate. It does feel realistic though!
The core of the movie is a bromance between Keith Carradine and Powers Booth - two people totally unlike (Carradine's a party boy who's arranged whores, cheerful, snappy; Booth is a brooding loner who loves his wife and quiet time) who drift together because they're the only ones with any brains. This is very well done relationship - it evolves slowly, believably, and is superbly acted (they don't even become great mates, if I'm not mistaken Carradine at the end runs away leaving Boothe bleeding on the floor!) - it gives it a heart that's present in the great Hill films (eg Charles Bronson and James Coburn in Hard Times, Michael Pare and Diane Lane in Streets of Fire - it's not there in The Driver).
Maybe that's unfair about them being the only smart ones... Casper isn't dumb, just over officious. I guess he does charge off like an idiot at the end. The guy who's with him wasn't dumb - he just had bad lucky.
It's very well acted - people like Fred Ward and Brion James have showier parts but everyone is good. The Cajuns are scary.
The sequence at the end where they are at a Cajun village full of people, "safe" but not really, is immensely scary. Great last shot.
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