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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1970s
    Movies - 1970s Movies - O 3 Mins Read

    Odd Angry Shot, The (1979)

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    When Aussie movie The Odd Angry Shot was released in 1979, it came in for a good deal of misdirected critical flak because it wasn’t a different kind of film about Vietnam. It was chided for not mounting a more obvious case against Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war.

    The point that was often missed by reviewers brandishing their own liberal sensibilities was that The Odd Angry Shot is less a war film than a study – often played for comedy – of a group of soldiers coping with boredom and each other.

    Its concern is not so much to offer a critique of the Vietnam war as to examine certain kinds of Australian male humour and camaraderie in circumstances that increasingly place a great strain on these qualities. The best of the film is in the way it eventually finds these qualities inadequate.

    oddangryshot_001

    A small group of the Special Air Services Regiment, 21 Patrol, led by the cynical and bitter professional soldier Harry (superbly played by Graham Kennedy) who is in flight from a broken marriage, is joined by another Australian, Bung (John Hargreaves) when his own group is disbanded.

    The members of 21 Patrol – including Bill (John Jarratt), Rogers (Bryan Brown), Dawson (Graeme Blundell), and Scott (Ian Gilmour) – spend their time playing cards, drinking beer, nursing their tinea and making jokes about masturbation and ‘queens’.

    From time to time, they are sent off on a raiding party; they take leave in Saigon; they receive the odd disturbing piece of news from home; and in a final skirmish around a bridge, Bung is killed and the others exact revenge on the Viet Cong.

    The Odd Angry Shot starred a strong male ensemble and provided a comic, sometimes moving, account of the Australian experience in the Vietnam war.

    Although the film is actually an adaptation of an autobiographical novel by an Aussie Vietnam veteran named Bill Nagle – who people assumed had been an SAS soldier – it eventually turned out he had been a cook.

    The film was largely shot at Canungra Land Warfare Centre in south-east Queensland (which is why much of “Vietnam” looks like the Australian bush). In preparation for their roles in the movie, the actors received weapons training at the Australian Army’s No. 1 Commando Base at Georges Heights in Sydney.

    oddangryshot53

    TRIVIA
    The last scene, in which Harry and Bill sit silently in a bar overlooking Sydney Harbour, shows the Centrepoint Tower (now Sydney Tower) clearly visible on the skyline – Construction did not begin on the tower until the latter years of the 1970’s – many years after the final Australian troops were home from Vietnam.

    Harry
    Graham Kennedy
    Bung

    John Hargreaves
    Bill

    John Jarratt
    Rogers

    Bryan Brown
    Dawson

    Graeme Blundell
    Medic

    Richard Moir
    Scott

    Ian Gilmour
    Cookie

    Graham Rouse
    Lt Golonka

    John Allen
    Black Ronnie

    Tony Barry
    Isaacs

    Brandon Burke
    Sgt Major

    Mike Harris
    Padre

    Johnny Garfield
    Lt Clifford

    Roger Newcombe
    Mayberry

    Brian Evis
    Nurse

    Rose Ricketts
    Bill’s Girl

    Sharon Higgins

    Director
    Tom Jeffrey

    Video

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