Off Limits (1988)

Simply Perfect

Overrated

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Off Limits is a sweaty, grimy piece set in Saigon during the Vietnam war, and has little to do with the actual conflict itself. In the filthy whorehouses of the district, someone is viciously murdering prostitutes, sparking an investigation by the U.S. Military. They bring two plainclothes detectives, tough, idealistic, violent Buck Mcgriff (Willem Dafoe) and flippant, goofball Albaby Perkins (Gregory Hines, superb), who hides his cunning intuition behind the sarcasm. They are law enforcement in a land without a soul, let alone law. The chaos and confusion of the war puts a sheen of distraction over their efforts to find and stop this monster. Their commanding officer (Fred Ward) has few answers for them, and they are led on hunches into some sordid realms of investigation, from unruly potential suspects in the core (David Alan Grier, Keith David), and a demented, sadomasochistic Army Colonel with some truly strange ideas of a good time (Scott Glenn, bugfuck crazy). They are lead here and there on a wild goose chase, until it becomes apparent that the answer may be a little closer to home than they thought. Dafoe and Hines hold the whole pile of scummy intrigue together with their well oiled performances, and even when it threatens to go off the rails, their committed work steers it back on track. Its like a buddy cop flick with none of the laughs, set in a hell half a world away where there's no protocol, no backup, and no one speaks English. Enough to make a tense, unnerving thriller in my books.

**SPOILERS** There's this Jack the Ripper-like killer loose on the streets of wartime Siagon who specializes in killing, after having sex with them, Vietnamese hookers who for some reason known only to himself have Eurasian children. What makes all this even more disturbing is that the killer is later identified by an US Army insignia he left at one of the murder scenes as being a high ranking, a full colonel, member of the US Military stationed in the city!Put on the case is US Army investigators Sargent's Buck McGriff, Willem Dafor, and Apbaby Perkins, Gregory Hines, who's job is to apprehend the killer before the entire Vietnamese population of the city turn against the occupying US Army and join the Viet Cong in retaliation to what this American psycho is doing! This with the US Army & Marines in a life and death struggle with the Viet Cong and RNV, North Vietnamese Army, at the start of the full-scale 1968 Tet Offensive!McGriff & Perkins do uncover a number of clues to who this murderer is but when they fallow them up they hit a brick wall in that no one, American & Vietnamese, is willing to point him out in fear of their lives. The only person they get any cooperation from is a French Nun Sister Nicole, Amanda Pays, who knew some of the victims whom her church looked after and cared for. Both McGriff and Perkins track down the #1 suspect in the hooker murders at Fire Base Conrad south of Saigon a Col. Dexter Armstrong, Scott Glenn.***SPOILERS*** In the few minutes that we, as well as Sargent's McGriff & Perkins, have in observing this "Golden Boy" of the US Army, the youngest full colonel in the US Military, you suddenly realize why we lost the war in Vietnam! Col. Armstrong who's loved and worshiped like a God by the men whom he commands comes across as a dangerously unstable grade triple A nut-case! Not only to those poor Vet Cong prisoners that he interrogates but to himself as well! It soon and tragically becomes obvious to McGriff & Perkins that Col. Armstrong isn't the man that their looking for in him eliminating himself as a suspect in a most spectacular fashion! It's then that the truth comes out, due to the process of elimination, to who this GI serial killer really is!**MAJOR SPOILER**Someone who got screwed in the past out of a field commission because it came out later that he's not qualified to be an "Offier and a Gentelman". In that he knocked up an Asian woman who ended up giving birth out of wedlock to his and her Eurasian baby!Lack luster at best crime thriller with both it's stars looking totally out of place in it. Willem Dafoe as Sgt. McGriff looks more like a grown up milk drinking Opie Taylor of the Andy Griffith show then a tough talking and hard as nails US Army Sargent who can have you shaking in your socks just by him, with his cold snake-like eyes and sinister wolf-like grin, looking at you. Gregory Hines as Sgt. Perkins seem so bored and out of it that you have the feeling that he's gulped down an entire bottle of downers or just want's out of the film as early as possible even if he has to be killed off for that to happen.

It`s obvious that by 1988 the Vietnam war film had nothing more to say . From the pondering self pity of THE DEER HUNTER to the cruel humour of FULL METAL JACKET the sub genre had burnt itself out in a similar manner as napalm had burnt out the jungles of South East Asia . SAIGON ( As it`s known in Britain ) doesn`t make any pretence at bringing anything new to Hollywood`s love affair to the `Nam and tells us nothing we didn`t already know:War is hell - Check The South Vietnamese regime wasn`t worth the life of one GI - CheckAll US colonels are crazy - Check SAIGON doesn`t really feel more than a gimmick film, the gimmick being that it`s a murder mystery set during the war in Vietnam . I should also point that the murder plot is very unconvincing , especially so in the last ten minutes where the murderer is revealed and it becomes a race against time to save his victim . If you want to see either Willam Defoe or Scott Glenn in a movie masterpiece rent PLATOON or APOCALYPSE NOW instead

It ought to be more engaging than it is. Willem DaFoe is a fine actor, and his performance here is as good as any he's given in the past. Gregory Hines doesn't have the same power but is reliable and sympathetic as always. Fred Ward is a tough, masculine bemustached presence here, as in "Benny and June," masculine without trying too hard to be. Scott Glenn has a small part that carries a lot of impact. Amanda Pays is -- well, Amanda Pays, perhaps the planet's least likely nun.The story has potential too, lifted as it seems to be from "Night of the Generals," based on Kirst's novel. Two plain-clothes CID men search for an officer who's been slaughtering hookers in the chaos of wartime Saigon. There are touches of "Apocalypse Now" too, as in the scene at Khe San where an apparently deranged Marine has dug himself a hootch at the end of a long trench, reminiscent of the scene at the bridge in "Apocalypse Now."But it just doesn't come together for me. There is no discernible character development. Everyone at the end of the movie is pretty much exactly what he or she was at the beginning. The two CID men finish their job. The focus is on DaFoe, who practically bursts with principle. Hines is more than just a sidekick here, but not much more. Glenn is an obvious psychotic who throws a couple of VC prisoners out of a helicopter and then tells DaFoe and Hines that they are about to ruin his army career by squealing on for being into S&M. Then he screams, "If I killed any prostitutes, I'll stay in this helicopter. If I DIDN'T kill any prostitutes, I'll jump out of the helicopter." Then he jumps out. What was THAT all about? Amanda Pays with her limpet-like lips exudes sensuality. She has a good moment or two with the CID men when they are questioning her about the murdered hookers. She looks at the photos and tells them phlegmatically that, yes, this one was into sadism. This one specialized in oral sex. The officers lined up to wait for her. And this girl was a prostitute and put on lesbian shows for the men at a bar called "The Pink Pussy." Meanwhile the two investigators are squirming with discomfort and rolling their eyes at the ceiling. She takes them to the bar where a nude stripper is performing and punishes them even more by insisting that they not wait backstage to question the witness but take a table in front instead. (Later she admits she enjoyed discomposing them.) But she's one of those movie nuns who is allowed to strip down to her shift and be attracted to one of the men because she had not yet taken her final vows.There are so many pegs here to hang good things on but they really don't show up. The treatment of sociopolitical issues is perfunctory. The characters are immutable. The final revelation comes as no surprise -- at least it didn't to me. The gaps are filled up with car chases and shootouts like any grade-B thriller. It's too bad really.