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Customer Reviews of Streamers

On the big screen it was potent and powerful as any
On the big screen it was potent and powerful as any film I had seen. The tension created kept me on the edge of my seat. Maybe as a gay man I perceived something of the conflict between myself and this rigid frigid military environment that crept into many a nighmare of mine. It had a live stage feel to it. Many emotions and personal historys were left up to the audience to interject, kind of compressing many diverse backgrounds into a short though volitale interaction. It remains one of my favorite films and I would very much like to see it on dvd.

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Another mess by Altman
How can the man who directed M*A*S*H* and Nashville have directed this drek?

The characters are unbelievable, their actions unmotivated and the storyline hopelessly unrealistic.

What's most annoying is that there are brilliant images and ideas in this "almost movie" that will never be seen by most people as they will not have the patience to suffer through the worst parts.

The movie (based on a play) takes place entirely in a barracks as these Airborne soldiers are waiting to ship out to Viet Nam.

Richie (played by a beautiful Mitchell Lichtenstein) is a young soldier who claims to be "queer" and keeps making accusatorial comments to Billy (played by a young and attractive Mathew Modine) There is apparently a story there but we never hear it.

Guy Boyd and George Dzundza, both talented actors play two sergeants who act totally out of character. (Grown men playing "Hide and Seek" in the rain after drinking all night?) They do have some great moments when they talk about paratroopers whose chutes don't open, but even then there are continuity and reality problems.

David Alan Grier (who went right on to play Corporal Cobb in A Soldier's Story) plays the only black soldier in the group until Carlyle (Michael Wright lately seen on HBO's OZ) shows up.

Carlyle ends up stabbing both Billy and Sgt Rooney and nothing is resolved. Overall the movie is not worth a waste of two lives (even fictional lives) and certainly not worth the 90 minutes I spent watching it.

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Excellent adaptation of a brilliant play
Ever since I read "Hurlyburly" about five years ago, I have been a fan of David Rabe. When I became aware that "Streamers," possibly his best play, was made into a film, I wasted no time in renting it. I found the it to be true to the original script, with minor additions that do nothing to help or hinder the play's dramatic impact. The plot concerns the interaction of six men in a desolate army barracks. It is only days (weeks?) before the men are to be shipped out to vietnam, where they will, most likely, die. This tentative, chilling circumstance is the impetus for the story's action. The central characters are Billy, a moralizing, confused college graduate, Roger, a street smart black man, Richie, who is an uninhibited homosexual and Carlyle, a lonely and paranoid psychopath. The diverse nature of these individuals makes symbiosis difficult, and their respective tensions and prejudices culminate in a nihilistic and violent explosion that metaphorically represents the conflict in vietnam, and the conflict inherent in mankind. Streamers is an intelligent, claustrophobic and highly disturbing film that I emphatically reccommend to any who appreciate good cinema.