Operation Warzone

The Vietnam War is a frequent motif in the work of crazy military fan David A. Prior, or rather it was in the initial phase of his career, when before he had familiar faces in front of the camera and real semi-professional production, he was filming with his friends playing army in the woods at the edge of town. It is essential to look at how he works with this motif in order to understand Prior and his form of militarism. In his whole filmography, only one movie, Operation Warzone, officially takes place in Vietnam. Judging by the descriptions put on the VHS cassettes, some foreign distributors also placed Hell on the Battleground in Vietnam, but that went against the master’s intention. Being an unsuccessful war, Vietnam would not fit well with Prior’s childishly boisterous movies, but would rather leave an unpleasant aftertaste. Prior generally uses Vietnam as a trauma that the heroes must overcome, achieving victory in the process (Killzone, Night Wars), or an essentially unresolved past from which they have taken training and attitudes that they subsequently apply to another conflict (Deadly Prey, Jungle Assault). When Prior presents his vision of wartime heroism in Hell on the Battleground, he characteristically does so in a fictional conflict so that the stigma of impending defeat doesn’t hang over the heroes’ heads. Therefore, Prior’s only real excursion into the Vietnam War takes the form of a completely surreal and wildly absurd farce that is deliberately divorced from reality. In the same way that boys playing soldiers dream up their own variations of wars based on not wanting to be on the losing side, Prior serves up the ultimate ’Nam fantasy. The hell with Rambo, who only brings home a few POWs after the war has been lost. Prior’s tough guys in green not only enjoy all of the iconic attributes like clambering through tunnels, mowing down Viet Cong and rescuing prisoners, but they even reverse the course of the entire war and ensure an American victory. Because, as every military enthusiast knows, the outcome of the war in Vietnam was decided only by opportunistic bureaucrats and lobbyists in Washington, whose machinations and interests prevented the invincible American infantry from winning. What is most breathtaking about Operation Warzone, however, is how little it takes itself seriously. There is no sign of the bombastic pathos of Hell on the Battleground; rather, everything has the almost light-hearted feel of a weekend excursion. This is largely due to the completely subversive synth music, which in many scenes evokes the background music of family TV series (and particular motifs are very reminiscent of the theme song of the British series Dempsey and Makepeace). The narrative itself does not rely on the classic formulas of war films at all, but instead draws inspiration from adventure movies set against the backdrop of war, such Kelly’s Heroes or even Zone Troopers. The elaborate plot establishes an insipid McGuffin, which then enables the constant piling on of absurd twists. Mainly, however, it allows a completely unbridled adventure in which someone is always running somewhere or shooting at somebody. While we’re on the subject of running, the whole film is very frantic. Prior evidently got a Steadicam to play with, so there’s an atypical number of moving shots. When it comes to the maestro’s hopelessly stiff firefights, which merely alternate between counter-shots of people standing around shooting at each other without being able to actually hit anybody, he constantly has someone running in front of the camera or behind the characters to get the effect of a bigger production. The flick’s overall goofiness is significantly increased by the manic overacting of David Marriott, who, for some unknown reason, thinks he’s a master of accents (so here he plays an Australian, whereas he was a Scot in Jungle Assault). Wonderful details like the fact that the film’s entire cast is composed of overweight white thirty-somethings and that the Vietcong wear only grey shirts and chinos (with loafers and white socks), but no helmets, because there was no room for them in the budget, only add to the overall magnificent impression that one gets from the film. Simply no one can make war as much fun as David A. Prior. (03/04/2021) (less) (more)