a5c7b9f00b In between drinking cans of Fosters beer, Australian soldiers tread on a few landmines, and generally experience the war in Vietnam. A group of Australian SAS regiment soldiers are deployed to Vietnam around 1967/8 and encounter the realities of war, from the numbing boredom of camp life and long range patrols, raids and ambushes where nothing happens, to the the terror of enduring mortar barrages from an unseen enemy. Men die and are crippled in combat by firefights and booby traps, soldiers kill and capture the enemy, gather intelligence and retake ground only to cede it again whilst battling against the bureaucracy and obstinacy of the conventional military hierarchy. In the end they return to civilization, forever changed by their experiences but glad to return to the life they once knew. On recent viewing, I have been surprised by how well the film reflected upon individual Australians&#39; involvement in The Vietnam War. It also, through a couple of monologue from old hand, Graham Kennedy, dispassionately reflected upon the ultimate futility of Australia&#39;s involvement.Perhaps it&#39;s greatest strength was documenting the Australian male character of the times without reverting to a &quot;lovable larrikins&quot; approach. The battle scenes are done without heroics or dramatics. There is a matter of factness about the activities and reactions of the unit that makes them seem all the more realistic.The boredom, routines and irritations of jungle warfare are therewellthe odd angry shot that punctuates guerilla warfare. Loved the low-key ending which resisted taking aim at the unjust treatment of the returning vets but did reflect their estrangementa presentiment of their future problems in readjusting. I first saw THE ODD ANGRY SHOT in the early 1980s when my knowledge of the Vietnam war was very little and my knowledge of Australian involvement was zero . It also has the distinction of being - Apart from THE GREEN BERETS so that doesn`t count - the first feature film I saw to be set around the conflict of the Vietnam war which was fortunate because this low budget Aussie film doesn`t hold up very well compared to the big budget Hollywood productions of the 70s and 80s . For example the locations resemble the bush of Northern Australia rather than the jungles of Indo -China , that`s probably because this film was indeed filmed in Northern Australia , and the fact that Australia has such a small pool of actors means some of them are unconvincingSAS soldiers , namely Graham Kennedy .<br/><br/>I wholeheartedly defend this film for not having massive battle scenes because that wasn`t actually the role of the Aussie SAS in Vietnam . Based in the province of Phouc Tuy about 70 kilometres South East of Saigon the regiment`s role was intelligence gathering , reconnaissance and identifying VC guerrillas in supposedly &quot; friendly territory &quot; , in other words their missions were totally different from the way the American military decided to fight the war ; iea conventional conflict . Though it should be pointed out THE ODD ANGRY SHOT goofs that several SAS soldiers died in the conflict , in reality the SAS lost their one and only trooper in a firefight in January 1967 .<br/><br/>Not to be totally negative the film makes the poignant and all too real statement at the end that instead of treating its former servicemenheroes - Whatever the rights and wrongs of a war - no one will care because &quot; They`re more interested in what`s happening on Coronation Street &quot; . How true . How bitterly unfairly true
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