The Odd Angry Shot

Around 1967 a group of Australian soldiers is sent to Vietnam. There are no big battles in the film; what it is really about is waiting. Empty hours in camp, patrols that come to nothing, mud, heat and joking. Then a mortar round or a booby trap changes everything in a moment and the group is one man fewer. Tom Jeffrey's film is among the first to tell the Vietnam war from the Australian side. Bryan Brown and John Hargreaves are in the cast. The telling neither glorifies the war nor sets out a political thesis; it runs on the language the soldiers use among themselves and on the indifference they meet when they get home. The humour is dark and constant.