‘Southern Comfort’ Is Populated By Tropes  [11 July 2014]  By
Brendan Boyle  “I don’t think you make movies about metaphors –
at least, I don’t.”  Walter Hill is correct in that no one who
has watched his 1981 bayou siege film Southern Comfort should
care one iota whether the action was intended as a broad analogy
for the Vietnam War—a failure lingering on the minds of American
audiences, many of whom would surely read story about a band of
hapless National Guard troops trudging in circles through the
Louisiana swamps as politically charged.  This is the sort of
thing that surely crossed the mind of Hill and his screenwriting
partners, Michael Kane (Smokey & the Bandit) and David Giler (a
genre stalwart, of the Alien films, The Parallax View, and
Beverly Hills Cop II). This is not because of any leftist
Hollywood agenda, but because it seems absurd for three
experienced filmmakers to complete a military-themed project and
never once consider that the political attitudes of the era
might cut into their bottom