Friday, August 5, 2011

The Sergeant (1968)


Warner Bros.
Directed by John Flynn
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Archive Collection)

Rod Steiger gives a brilliant performance as the career Army man assigned to a lax fuel depot outfit in France in the years after WWII. He befriends tall, blue-eyed John Phillip Law, who humors his superior officer with nights out drinking. However, when he wants to spend time with his girlfriend he finds his pass revoked and starts working nights. When the Sergeant starts following him around on his dates he gets really worried. The truth comes out in a bar one drunken night. Law shuns the man from that point forward, and he spirals into desperate loneliness. I thought Steiger was better here than his Academy Award winning performance in the previous year's In the Heat of the Night.

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