Specialist Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) is a clerk with the U.S. Army's 317th Supply Battalion stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1989. Having joined the military to escape prison for car theft, he has little respect for the establishment and its ideals of honor and defending the homeland. He and many of the other misfits, criminals, and drug users who comprise the unit in Germany have taken the Army's slogan to the nth degree by being all they can be as black marketers.
Elwood is the personal secretary for Commander Wallace Berman (Ed Harris), a burnt-out careerist whose aggressive wife (Elizabeth Perkins) is pushing him to make a move up in the ranks. Meanwhile, she is having sex with Elwood. He's been selling Mop n' Glow to Germans and cooking up heroin for a black sergeant who's dealing the drug. Elwood has made enough to purchase a Mercedes Benz and all the appropriate technological toys for his pad. When he stumbles upon two truckloads of new armaments including guns, grenade launchers, and missiles, he is convinced that his glory days and a $5 million payday are just around the corner.
Australian filmmaker Gregor Jordan is at the helm of this black comedy based on a novel by Robert O'Connor. Needless to say, he did not have the happy cooperation of the American military (unlike so many recent gung-ho Hollywood movies touting the might and firepower of the United States against evil-doers abroad). Joaquin Phoenix is perfectly cast as the shrewd Elwood, a young man who desperately wants to get ahead. However, his grandiosity is challenged when Robert Lee (Scott Glenn), a new top sergeant arrives on base. He is a Vietnam vet who loved that war and relished every minute he exercised his abilities as a killing machine. Lee takes an immediate disliking to Elwood and is positively enraged when he begins dating his rebellious daughter Robyn (Anna Paquin).
Elwood's plans to deliver the stolen arms to a Turk wheeler dealer are put in jeopardy following the death of his best friend and co-conspirator. Then Lee proves that he can be even more duplicitous than he is. Buffalo Soldiers snaps, crackles and pops in the spirit of 1970's Catch-22 — another satire on military life.
The DVD has an audio commentary with director Gregor Jordan and a featurette titled "Beyond the Iron Curtain" with interviews with various cast members. A Sundance Channel "Anatomy of a Scene" episode looks at the scene when the tank crashes through a German village.
